If you were asked to name the most beautiful thing you could think of, what would it be? I suppose there might be as many different answers as there are different types of people in the world.
A mother might say that a child’s smile is the most beautiful sight. A father might say that nothing could be more beautiful than his children respecting one another.
To a hiker, the distant snow-capped mountains might be the most beautiful. A connoisseur of piano music might claim a certain sonata is unsurpassed in beauty. A teacher might respond that a classroom full of bright and eager faces is the most beautiful.
We live in a world that is full of beauty. Where does this beauty come from? Many people in our modern times would not hesitate to answer that this complex, beautiful world is the product of chance. However, the idea of chance doesn’t explain the beauty of a single snowflake, much less anything else. If you were able to observe chance over a time span of a billion years, in all that time you would never see chance create something from nothing, much less something beautiful.
Make no mistake about it, not chance, but God who is infinite in wisdom and power created the world. There is no other reasonable explanation for existence of the beautiful world we live in. “He hath made everything beautiful in His time,” reads a verse from Ecclesiastes.
God making the world is a grand truth that should never cease to amaze us, but it is equally true that each one of us has sinned and deeply offended Him as well. “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” There is nothing beautiful about sin. It makes our lives barren towards God and brings about our eternal death. “The wages of sin is death.”
Beauty is a blessing, but not a great blessing, for it never delivered a soul from the punishment their sin deserves. Only the Lord Jesus can do that. The One who spoke a word and the world leapt into existence let Himself be nailed to a cross. He bore in His own body the punishment of the sins of all who would afterward believe. The punishment that should have fallen on them instead fell on Him in blow after blow. He drained the last dark drop from the cup of suffering, so that sinners might not have to drink it themselves.
The greatest blessing a man or woman can possess isn’t physical at all. It is spiritual. It is the gift of eternal life and it is given the moment a person places their faith in the Son of God. “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:1616For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)). Eternal life is a gift procured for them by the suffering and death of the Son of God. All other gifts given to men or women in this life pale in comparison.
Created things might be pleasant, but they can’t bring life to a soul who is dead in sins and trespasses.
Won’t you take the Lord Jesus as your Saviour that you might possess the greatest of all blessings—the gift of eternal life? “This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent” (John 17:33And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. (John 17:3)).