A Beautiful Life
A rather strange concept among the children of men is that beauty can and must be found in pain as well as pleasure. This behavior seems almost inconcevable to the worldly man, who ascribes beauty in the most lopsided ways. For instance, a carnal person will generously admit how a picturesque sunrise, a looming snow-capped mountain, an attractive woman, or a well-written play are all filled with a kind of beauty. But, it is my experience, that only a Christian is equipped to call the cancers of this life beautiful, or the poverty altogether lovely. It is the Christian who can endure the loathsome trial with all joy and the frowning providence of God as a true delight.
And while this may seem a bit mental, the Psalms will help us understand how.
WHOLE LIFE BEAUTY
In the 16th Psalm, David says the following in verses 5 & 6:
The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and my cup; You support my lot. The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; Indeed, my heritage is beautiful to me.
In this short passage, we learn 4 important truths that contribute to the Christian’s understanding of beauty and contentment.
TRUTH 1: THE LORD IS OUR PORTION
David begins this verse by reminding believers that the Lord is our portion. No matter what circumstances befall us, or what meals and drink we put to our lips, or what lands or houses we accumulate in our portfolios, the Lord is the true inheritance of every believer. This stands in clear distinction to the unbeliever, who gathers property and possessions like ants gather dirt, but still experiences multiplied sorrows from bartering the one true God for idols made with hands (Psalm 16:4). The psalmist is graciously pulling back the veil of reality for us to see the point of human living.
Think about it, if our inheritance is money or property value, our mood will fluctuate commensurate with the ebb and flow of the markets. Won’t such a fickle proposition end up producing a multiplication of sorrows? Or what if our portion comes from physical strength or sex appeal, wont our experience in life sag pitifully down into despair whenever wrinkles, white hairs, and calories collect in the gut? Of course, it will.
The simple and unavoidable point is that the human experience of temperament is directly tied to whatever we find beautiful. If the affections are affixed upon temporal things that dull and die, human experience in life will look more like an electrocardiogram than what David is setting forward here. But, if the believer will take note of what David is saying, and understand that God Himself is our portion, what could ever sour our disposition?
If the markets are up, our joy still comes from the Lord. If a great depression should overtake the land, the sound of Christian hymn-singing shall still overpower the shrieking cries of broken-hearted heathens, because our experience is rooted in the beauty of God and not on a fallen world. Indeed, physical attractiveness, relationships, health, wealth, the sovereignty of nations, and worldly inheritances will fail. Moth and rust will claim them all. But the Christian who understands this passage will never wail, because they have become enamored with their beautiful radiant God.
TRUTH 2: THE LORD REIGNS OVER RANDOMNESS
A second truth we must consider, along with God being our most precious portion, is that no event is random in the hand of God. While the world casts the lot, supposing chance and superstition can override providence, the Christian understands that everything - both the good and the ill - comes from the wise hand of the Almighty (Proverbs 19:21; Isaiah 45:7).
When David says “You support my lot”, He is appealing to the truth that God upholds, sustains, and authors everything, event, and emotion that comes into our life. Blind fate and random chance are not sovereign over you, God is. And what a tremendous hope that is for the Christian.
While carnal-minded men are vexing over “poor luck” and “bad fortunes”, the Christian rests in the comfort of God’s impenetrable and unchanging will. Remember, if something delights our earthly minds or tickles our fickle fancies, we praise the Lord for giving us more than we deserve. If our malleable hearts are brought to merriment and mirth, if favor and blessings fall on us to extraordinary degrees, or if scarcity and lack are banished from our experience, let us remember our joy is not found in them. Our joy comes from the Lord who orders our steps and gives us what we need; whether that be good times or ill, pleasures or pain; joys unspeakable or pains barely sufferable.
The world can only know beauty and contentment when pleasures abound. The Christian, however, can know both, and in all circumstances, because their hope is not tied to the changing seasons or upon their mutable feelings, but in the unchanging, immutable, and ever-beautiful God.
TRUTH 3: THE LORD ASSIGNS OUR BOUNDARIES
David makes a curious statement in verse 6, saying “The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places”. By this, we may reasonably assume that a panoply of linear shapes did not magically fall from the sky and land at just the right points of his empire. We may also assume if such an event would have happened, it would not have contributed to David’s view of beauty or contentment. So what is it?
Instead, we must understand that the word for “lines” here is a common word used for territory or boundary markings. Its normal usage would be to delineate which portion of land belongs to me as opposed to the portion that belongs to thee. David is here saying that all my possessions - everything belonging to me within the physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, relational, and material realms - have been assigned to me by God. This means everything.
For instance, our vehicles, furniture, refrigerators, and washing machines are all gifts from our creator (James 1:17). A man’s ambition, his passionate affection for a woman, and his fatherly protection of children are all deposited within Him by Yahweh. This much even a reprobate may rejoice in. But, even while God is not the author of pain or sin, only the Christian can “count it all joy” (James 1:2-4) when all kinds of displeasing and malignant atrocities befall us. How is that? Because we know that God not only oversees our lot in life, and gives us whatever collection of pleasing and painful circumstances that occur, we also know that He uses these things to remind us that He is bringing us to future glory (Romans 8:18), of a kind that will far outlast and outweigh our light and momentary afflictions (2 Corinthians 4:17), and will even work out His beautiful will and plan in us now, because we belong to Him (Romans 8:28).
The Christian is the only kind of human, who can honestly look at an awful calamity, weep from searing pain and loss, calling it evil and abhorring it, all the while also embracing it as both useful and beautiful. This is a paradox to most, but to the Christian in some way, and somehow, God can use all of these events for His glory and for the good of His elect. In that sense, we may ache over the tragedies that have crept into our lives, even while seeing them as tools in the hands of our beautiful God.
TRUTH 4: ASCRIBING BEAUTY TO ALL THINGS INCREASES CONTENTMENT IN ALL THINGS
David brings these two verses to a close reminding us of the point. He says:
my heritage is beautiful to me.
To David, everything that God has given him (His heritage), everything he is called upon to steward, may rightly be called beautiful in his sight. Some of those things will produce creaturely joys and some will evoke alligator tears. Some occasions will be sweet even while others are vile and bitter. Yet everything in his life can be viewed as beautiful. How is this so?
Because when we know God is our portion, when we rest in His sovereign control over all things, when we understand nothing comes into our lives except by the hand of a loving God, then we can avoid the temptation and the trap of rooting beauty in the stuff of life. For we know, if beauty is found in changing things, our experience of contentment will ever change. When life is good, joyful, happy, and successful our contentment will be intact. But when the shipwreck comes, when the avalanche lands on top of you, when life opens up and swallows you whole, you will be devastated. But, if beauty is found in our unchanging God, then nothing on earth and no power of hell can ever move us, shake us, or break us.
Today, if you are prone to complaining, despair, agitations, frustrations, grublings, or bitterness, I want you to know that you have taken your eyes off of God. You are looking for something other than Him to satisfy you and those things are not working. Quickly remove your eyes from these worthless things and cast them upon your beautiful God. Joy, hope, and contentment are yours, in all things, when you find God all-satisfying and all-beautiful!
