For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; he is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Splendour and majesty are before him; strength and glory are in his sanctuary…worship the Lord in the splendour of his holiness; tremble before him, all the earth…Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it; let the fields be jubilant and everything in them. Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy; they will sing before the Lord for he comes…

(Ps 96.4-6,9, 11&12)

I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end…That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil – this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure for ever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him..Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few.

(Ecc 3.10-14; 5.2)

But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream…

(Jer 17.7&8)

Beautiful in its time…which means that beauty will come to an end, will pass away, and that ache in our hearts which is briefly assuaged by it must return. The writer of Ecclesiastes explains just why the fleeting quality of beauty is so painful for us to bear – because God has set eternity in our hearts, that reflection of his nature which is designed for an everlasting expression and experience of love.

We seek to prolong our experience of beauty – by trying to capture it in a photograph; finding words to convey it others; creating methods of remembering and reproducing it in the case of music – and even by trying to prolong our own lives in order to increase the amount of beauty we may experience! But ultimately, none of these can satisfy the eternal appetite which is placed within us by God, an appetite which can only be appeased when finally we find in the new creation the full expression of all those things of which beauty in this world is only a shadow.

The author, academic and christian apologist, CS Lewis gave his biography the title “Surprised by Joy”, because it was through these ecstatic, and fleeting experiences of beauty (which he calls ‘Joy’), that he first hungered after an other-world, a place from which this joy came and to which he belonged. It was in the gospel of Christ that he finally found the source of joy, and his adoption into the kingdom where the great Author of joy, the source of beauty and glory reigns. And in many writings, especially his ‘Narnia’ series, he reflects on the purpose of these moments when the beauty of this world grabs us and take our breath away.

God’s creation must reflect his power and character, his essential beauty is revealed in so many ways in his handiwork. Is it not natural that those whose hearts are formed to mirror this divine nature should thrill in response to such glimpses of glory? We are not the Creator, but the creatures, and our own attempts to generate true beauty can never satisfy in the same way as the real thing. So we respond in celebration to the glories around us, and we gladly acknowledge our inability to match God in creation. We remember that God is in heaven, and we on the earth, so that our words – and our ambitions – should be few!

When I stumble into the presence of glory, I worship with a full heart. When my heart aches in contemplating the beauty of this broken world, I rejoice because one day, Lord make it soon, I shall be at home in the unimagineable beauty of a perfect, re-created world, and I shall be sharing my joy with the Author and Creator himself, face-to-face. When I have to pass on, when the beauty is gone, I do not grieve as those who have no hope, but allow the experience to feed my home-sickness for heaven, and to nourish my soul with fresh hope and expectation.

My God knows my need; and I choose to trust him for the supplies I need along this journey – especially for continual discoveries of glory along the way, as his power, splendour and majesty are revealed in his creation, and my appetite for my glory-home grows stronger. Let us worship along the way, and press on towards the goal!