Beautiful...and? or?...Broken

  A few weeks ago, my sister and I and a friend enjoyed a screening of a nature documentary called  The Riot and the Dance, Part I: Earth (in theaters a second time on April 19th - find a theater here).

  Now what on earth do a dangerous riot and a graceful dance have in common?!  As this documentary and hopefully the subject of this post would argue: the planet on which we live, of course.

                               

  The film makes the case for this claim beautifully (in both awesome visuals and stirring perspective), and I'm not going to do that here.  Just go watch the film when it screens again on April 19th, 2018.  Or find yourself a DVD and share it with your family.

  My purpose for bringing the film and the subject up is to touch on why it matters that we realize that our world "is not a basket of kittens", as Riot and the Dance puts it.

  No, the universe in which we live is much better described as an awesome though broken masterpiece, groaning in wait for the final Healing of Harms. 
  I would ask you to consider that we have to admit and accept both halves, the stunning and gorgeous AND the crumbling and horrifying, in order to keep a right perspective of who God really is.  Of what He has made, and what He has creatively repaired.

  When someone gets a cut and you help bandage the wound, you would hate to have an onlooker say something about how cruel you are to make a scar in that place.  On the contrary!  Your bandaging is to help the hurt to start healing, and the subsequent scar is the beautiful new skin that, though the former cut won't be completely forgotten, makes the wound no longer open, vulnerable and ugly.

 
  Of all the stunning landscapes you can find all across the globe, I really love mountains and deep forests more than any other natural settings in the world.

  Have you ever noticed that mountains are essentially scars too?  They cover up fissures and cracks in our planet's skin that were caused as a result of the severity of mankind's sin at the time of the great Flood.  The God who is 'slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness' (Psalm 86:15) is still a just God; He will not withhold justice forever: 'vengeance is Mine, I will repay, says the Lord' (Romans 12:19b).  'Do not be deceived; God is not mocked' (Galatians 6:7a).

  But even after such an enormous dealing of justice was required, His overwhelming steadfast love —even for the impersonal natural world— followed close behind; He covered the scoured earth with new, lush green, the broken pressure fissures with majestic mountain scars, and those new, bare heights with astounding beauty, and refuge for the creatures and the remnant of mankind He preserved in His mercy.

  It's staggering to realize His merciful handiwork despite man's repeated treachery.  But realize, despite all this generosity of His, this is not how He created it at the start.  It's how He masterfully repaired what we caused to be wrecked. 

  We can be sure all this brokenness, despite being mingled with so much beauty, must deeply break God’s heart if it breaks ours when we notice it from time to time.  I know it breaks mine.  But He knows what could be and now is not; and the pain must me that much greater for Him.

  If we don't keep this whole thing in perspective like that, we wind up with the age-old problem of thinking that suffering, pain, viciousness in nature, illness, brokenness, and so on are at God's hand, and that He turns a blind eye.  But we, in our rebellion, caused it, and He is still patiently repairing and granting mercy after mercy.

  And oh, how He does feel the sorrow of it all; truly more acutely than we ever could, though we don't realize it.  So very like this;
  '...Aslan was bigger and more beautiful and more brightly golden and more terrible than [Digory] had thought [from seeing Him a distance away]. He dared not look into the great eyes.

"Please—Mr. Lion —Aslan—Sir," said Digory... A lump came into his throat and tears in his eyes, and he blurted out:

..."Please, please—won't You—can't You give me something that will cure Mother?" Up till then he had been looking at the Lion's great feet and the huge claws on them; now, in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life.

For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion's eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory's own that... he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother [and her fatal illness] than he was himself.

"My son, my son," said Aslan. "I know. Grief is great. ...[But] what I give you now will bring joy." '

                                                               (—C.S. Lewis, 'The Magician's Nephew')

  This same principle applies to why we celebrate Good Friday and Easter.

           
  We can’t suppose that God created the world and mankind so that Jesus could be brutally crushed, crucified, and rise again.  That would cause us to be appalled at the apparent cruelty of God's character, and would be a terrible misunderstanding.

  But take stock of the whole of what our finite minds can grasp, and the perspective leads to awe and a gratitude we can't quite grasp.  He was more than willing to suffer and take all that brutality upon Himself to bandage the grisly wound we caused, though that’s not how He would have planned it if there was any other way.  But to not take the broken with the beautiful confuses our minds about what it says about God’s character; we need both halves to understand either. 

         

  Please join me in entering this joyful Easter and Spring season with this kind of perspective in mind.  Don't loose sight of  brokenness, certainly, because you will bump up against it repeatedly in life, and it only make sense when set alongside the beauty and healing of the other half; and those things couldn't be appreciated and loved for long without understanding the first part.  We have to keep both in the right focus, or we won't be able to see anything rightly.

(All quotes, pictures, etc. always belong to their original owners. All other thoughts are my own.)