Beside Loch Lomond at nine o'clock in the morning
According to Calvin the created order is "the theatre of God's glory," where the backdrop, the accompanying music and the scene-setting is directed by a Creator who delights in beauty and in the continuing drama of life. That ages old puzzle of aesthetics, whether something is beautiful if there is nobody there to see it and respond to its presence, becomes less of a conundrum for those who believe in a Creator who is both artist and aesthete, who creates, stands back and sees that it is good.
The scene I walked into that morning was far more than a candidate for shortbread tin picture of the year. It was the result of millions of years of practice, the deft patience and pesistence of the artist shaping and forming, building colour, light and texture towards just that precise moment when artistic vision comes to realisation and completion, and the mind of the maker is glimpsed in the transient triumph of coincident forms. At precisely that moment, the Artist-Creator, I believe, smiles.
I know. That's a long semantic way round. Why not just say it's a beautiful photo. Well, actually, the photo itself is pretty ordinary, compared to the origianl which was something quite other than this digitally reductionist record. The breathtaking moments of gazing on a reflected sky, mirrored water, undisturbed silence, and the indefinable sense of presence, my own and that of this place and time, and the rising in the heart of what can only be recognition and gratitude, and the privilege of simply being there, as witness to beauty; these cannot be recorded or captured. They are the gift of the moment; the photo isn't a way of keeping what I saw. It merely bears witness to what cannot be captured, and to that relinquishment which is what gives beauty its value, attraction and hold over the soul.
Those moments of inexplicable beauty, and their power to lift up our heads, are amongst the arguments for the existence of God which I find most persuasive. They are events of annunciation, when God steps into our lives and sets us once again the task of explaining, "Whence, and why this beauty?"
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