Beauty on This Side of Eternity

I have spent the past week checking off one of the items at the top of my bucket-list. I have truly seen beauty. The kind of beauty that have you in tears, multiple times and I am still counting. However, these beautiful experiences have come with their own pain and battles, making me realise our (or maybe just my) inability to perfectly enjoy beauty to its fullest on this side of eternity.

As someone who crosses bridges before I get to them, and for something I’ve wanted to do for over a decade now, I have spent a lot of time day dreaming about how I would meet these beauties for the first time, who I would be meeting them with, etc. But as I stand here, with beauties dancing above me, standing in front of me and falling on me, there has also been the unwanted knowledge of the differences between how I pictured my experience (especially the person I pictured sharing this experience with) and how I am currently experiencing it. I remember how I saw them in my mind and then I begin to compare both. Oh how I long for a day when my mind would work right, when there’ll be no tension like this in my mind. Mind you, I am not trying to say the experiences have been less beautiful, they have literally had me in tears of awe.

The worst part of this tension is the temptations it brings. It has been really tempting to become bitter, resentful or prideful (show off and/or feel pity for myself.) Almost with every beautiful sight, I have had to pray and fight. Fight thoughts and pray God protects me and my heart from them. As I write this, there is a bit of that fight and prayer going on in my head right now and I hope I am not writing this out of bitterness, resentment or self-pity

While the fights for a better heart continues, I felt God reminding me, that unfortunately for a human mind still in a sinful body, seeing through sinful eyes, the fight (losing sometimes and winning somethings) might never end on this side of eternity. With every beautiful I experience I have, I would have to fight to keep my heart from pride. I would have to fight to keep my heart from using it to prove anyone wrong, or prove that I too can have this, do this, or be at this place or that place.

One can say these differences have spoiled the experience, but I would say, they have made it possible for me to enjoy this moment better. And even better, they have pointed my heart to look ahead to a time when I would be able to perfectly enjoy beauty perfectly, to its fullest. Off course, I would have chosen to not have or notice this tension, but I would rather spend this time fighting for a right heart than think it is well while I silently scream “look at me now!”

This fight would likely vary from person to person, and be different for a person in different seasons. I hope to repeat these beautiful experiences sometime and though I don’t know the battles I might have to fight when I do, I do expect them and I will be praying through them.

To this regard I want to share that one of the secondary things I that excite me the most about heaven (outside God because He is the primary and most important) is the idea of new “taste buds.” Taste buds that is never tempted to pride, bitterness, resentment, etc. but can enjoy beauty to the fullest without corrupting the heart, or making gods out of the beauties. I look forward to the beauty on the other side of eternity and mind and eyes and can enjoy it in perfect purity as it was meant to be enjoyed.

I pray you don’t read this in the tone of a young man that has figured his life and is living a perfect life. That would be far from where I am at the moment. Instead I would like you to see these as the struggle to get better, that happens in my heart.

I also pray that in whatever season you are currently in (abundance of beauties or the lack of them) that God protects your heart from bitterness, resentment and all forms of pride (self-pity or showing off)

These hymns have helped me see a the beauties and enjoy the experiences better:

• How Great Thou Art

• Marvellous

Notes:

1. I came across this concept of a prayer against resentment, bitterness and self-pity in this sermon about Joseph by Alistair Begg Joseph in Review — Part Two
2. John Piper helped me realise that self-pity (and sulking - which I know too well) is another form of pride. See: Make War on Your Urge to Sulk and How Do I Wage War on My Self-Pity?