Beholding Beauty in All Its Forms

When God created his people, he put them in a garden. Before he gave the mandate to work, to be fruitful and multiply, he set them in the center of beauty, goodness, and life. It is almost as if he wanted them to be primarily people who beheld rather than produced. It didn't take long for the beauty of the best to be thwarted by the enemy though, and so absorption of the self instead of the Creator has been stealing our gaze ever since. We are still all worshippers though, some of us blindly and some of us perennially reminded to lift our eyes to a better hill, one from which our help comes. The temptation to produce our own glory instead of absorbing the glory God wants us to behold is always near to us and we must become experts in bouncing our gazes back to him. 

Here are some (hopefully) true and beautiful and good words I've read, said, listened to, and feasted upon this week. 

Listen

We listened to this short talk from Andy Crouch this past week about high friction and low friction and I cannot recommend it more highly. It has been ringing in our ears for over a week now. 

Beau Hughes is the pastor of The Village Church Denton (once a campus of my church, now a plant of it), and he shared these words with us last week. It was one of my favorite testimonies in my near ten years at TVC. 

I spoke with my friend Christine Hoover about her new book, Searching for Spring, and my own journey with waiting for marriage, babies, and just all things slow coming. 

Sing

This album is coming soon from Audrey Assad and you're going to want to feast on it. 

Sandra McCracken just released her newest and it's the perfect Lenten soundtrack. 

This album has been going nearly non-stop in our house the past week. 

Short Reads

This interview with Karen Swallor Prior and her husband Roy is one of the best things I read online this week. Take a few minutes and feast on it. 

A few months ago Eric Schumacher sent me the draft for this article at Risen Motherhood. It was just before our most recent miscarriage and what a blessing for both Nate and me to read. 

My friend Tony Woodlief is (thank God) writing more regularly again. This piece on parenting his new twin boys in this season of life is rich, rich, rich. Read through to the end. We all need this reminder. 

Long Reads

Nate and I have been dreaming of a big backyard garden since we first saw our property in Denver. It hasn't come to fruition yet, but we're still dreaming. This book is helping. 

This is a memoir written by an upstate New York farmer. She's from one side of the Adirondacks and I'm from the other, but the culture, weather, farming, people, and anecdotes are all very similar. I loved this book. 

I first read this book in high school and started rereading it again last week. I'd forgotten how perfect it is. 

. . .

I hope you find some beauty in some of these recommendations or other sources you find on your own. I hope you can still your own hand of production long enough to appreciate the gifts, minds, and works of others. And I hope, more than all that, you can lift your gaze to the good, good Father who gives every good and perfect gift in its right and perfect time and never one single moment before.