Created to Make Beautiful Things

Created to Make Beautiful Things

The first part of our discussion about beauty introduced the idea of creating an environment that is infused with beauty. I know the obvious instinct is to think about beauty in terms of art. But what is art, specifically, to you? 

• It may be an idea for a business that creates a wonderful environment to work in.

• Or perhaps it’s an idea that, when developed, enhances and adds pleasure to people’s lives.

• Or an educational program that helps kids learn in a revolutionary new way.

We can create beautiful things in so many areas that can bring meaning and joy. God’s works of art include all of creation. Talk about variety! Maybe we  need to expand our definitions of art and beauty. For one thing, despite what we’ve been told, beauty is more than skin deep. 

In the Greek language, the word beautiful is not only associated with the idea of good but also “includes the notion of ‘call.’” Beauty calls us to something more than what we can understand with corporeal perception. Something beyond the here and now. 

John O’Donohue teaches us that “the heart is the place where beauty arrives. . . . It was fashioned for an eternal kinship with beauty; God knew that the heart would always be wedded to him in desire; for the other name of God is beauty.”1

I submit that when we grasp the power of beauty, we will spare no possible effort or cost to do beautiful things. 

When we feature created beauty, or create beauty ourselves, we are practicing a hospitality rooted in God himself and generating an environment where things of importance can be conveyed in ways infinitely useful. 

Hospitable leaders are not primarily utilitarian. We are not use-the-quickest-most-efficient-least-expensive-way-to-get-it-done-and-it-doesn’t-matter-what-it-looks-sounds-feels-tastes-or-smells-like kind of people. We expend the time and energy and make the necessary sacrifices to do beautiful things. 

We do beautiful things because beauty is good in and of itself. 

We might say it is transcendently useful. I was irresistibly impacted years ago when I read a wonderful book called Angels in the Architecture. Douglas Jones and Douglas Wilson convicted me when they suggested that the utilitarian ugliness of so much that Christians do would cause one to conclude that we have forgotten the holiness of God. If “we would understand how beautiful His holiness is . . . we could not be kept from writing concertos and building cathedrals. . . . We were created to make beautiful things—in music, in stone, on canvas, and sculpted gardens, and in wonderful buildings.”2 

As I read this, I hear the words of Augustine ringing in my ears, “Too late came I to love thee, O thou Beauty both so ancient and so fresh.” And I hear the psalmist pray, “Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us.”3 

There is this interminable discussion as to whether it is even moral to invest in things that are not immediately pragmatic. My response to this is that beauty is not always practical, but it is always useful. It is useful because it reflects God’s glory. It is useful because it honors God. It is useful because it moves people’s hearts toward the transcendent. If beauty accomplishes nothing more than this, it is still useful. 

I heard my son Christian having a conversation with another leader about programming Sunday worship. Christian mentioned a certain song our team performed that might not typically be used in a worship set. The leader asked, understandably, “But could the congregation sing it?” And Christian replied, “Probably not. But it was beautiful. It glorified God. The people were moved by it. And sometimes we just do beautiful things because they are beautiful.” 

I propose that we must start from a premise that acknowledges that we should want to create an environment that is beautiful in every way just because we should—because it’s the right thing to do. 

We serve a beautiful God, who created us with the ability to make beautiful things. Go make something beautiful today.

When was the last time you enjoyed—or even noticed—something beautiful? Drop a comment and share your experience.

1 John O’Donohue, The Invisible Embrace of Beauty (New York: Harper, 2005), 19–20.

2 Wilson and Jones, Angels in the Architecture, 28, 31.

3 Wilson and Jones, 25. 

Photo by Joshua Abner from Pexels

Adapted from Live Ten (Thomas Nelson) and The Hospitable Leader (Baker Publishing Group) by Terry A. Smith. All rights reserved. 

Have you downloaded “The 5 Welcomes of Hospitality” yet? This free resource shares concepts from my book, The Hospitable Leader, based on the primary leadership methodology of Jesus. Download now.