Why Beauty?

In thinking about the beauty of this season, one has to wonder why beauty? Why did not God just make a nondescript tree with brown bark and lackluster leaves? Why the Bradford Pear with its gorgeous white blossoms? Why not just a plain vanilla night sky? Why the dazzling sunsets we see in Texas (and in some places here in Nashville)? Why the five senses?

In her chapter in the book The Christian Imagination by Leland Ryken, Luci Shaw writes of "Beauty and the Creative Impulse". She says, "When the world was created, it might have seemed to have been enough to have it work. To include beauty seems unnecessary for a mechanistic universe. We have been given a sense of the beautiful which can be regarded as gratuitous. Which it is--a gift of pure grace. And our creation of beautiful things links us with our Creator. God was the first Quilter of prairies, the primal Painter (night skys, ferns, thunderheads, snow on cedars), the archetypal metal Sculptor (mountain ranges, icebergs), the Composer who heard the whales'
strange, sonorous clickings and songs in his head long before there whales to sound them, the Playwright who plotted the sweeping drama of Creation, Incarnation, Redemption, and the Poet whose Word said it all." Wow!

And as for the trees: Genesis 2:9 RSV "And out of the ground, the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food."

Thank you God, our Creator for Bradford pears, and cherry trees, and apricot blossoms, and the peach.

For the Beauty of America

No matter what state you live in, if you can drive down the highway in the spring and enjoy wildflowers and a billboard-free vista, you have Claudia Alta Taylor to thank for that pleasure.

Ladybird Johnson beautified our country as no other person has in her quest to plant literally millions of wildflower seeds and trees. The Highway Beautification Act of 1965 was signed by her husband Lyndon Johnson and dedicated to her.

A strong woman, I think that only she could have understood and adored her strong and eccentric husband LBJ. They are two Texans who changed the country for the better. If only their legacies (hers in beautification and his in civil rights) could be emulated by another Texan in contemporary times.
Well done, Ladybird! Thank you for all the bluebonnets.