Is there nothing beautiful in this world anymore? Is there nothing at all that can delight us and give us hope? How many times have we felt we’ve seen it all, and there is nothing more that can inspire us the way things have inspired us before? How many times have we felt there is nothing more that can move us, that there is nothing more that can touch our hearts and bring our eyes to tears?
Were the people of old merely more sentimental, and we more practical in our thoughts and ways? Were the folks that have lived before us merely too unfortunate to have fewer things with which to content themselves, or have we found too many things that overwhelm us, and we have lost sight of those things that can truly make us happy?
What has changed? What has passed? Whatever faded that the more we grew and learned, the more we saw the shadows, the more our eyes longed for the beauty that faded through the passing of the years?
Was it really something that left us, never ever to return? The crispness of the morning air smothered by the urban smog? The pristine waters of brooks and streams, now ever rare as dark shadows crept even the mightiest of seas? The freshness of flowers in gardens now finding but lesser and lesser space in the city’s towering skyscrapers? Or was it something in our eyes that blurred our vision, such that we look and stare but we can no longer see?
What are we after anyway? What do we yearn to see? Is it beauty still? Is it goodness still? Or have we shifted our gaze from things eternal and pure to thrills that excite our senses but never satisfies us in the end?
Worse, we may not be looking anymore, we may not believe anymore that there is something beautiful in the world, in us, in one another. We are afraid to look. And everything we do seems only to escape the emptiness within that all the wealth and glitter of the world we have created cannot really fill.
Look within. There is wisdom and unspeakable peace that await you. Look again. There is still wonder in the single drop of dew that clings upon the faded petal of a rose. Look with a new pair of eyes and with a new heart. A heart filled with courage. A heart filled with faith, believing that there is still some beauty in the human soul, and in the breath of God blowing upon its creatures, making all things new, revealing all things beautiful.
This people will listen and listen, but not understand; they will look and look, but not see, because their minds are dull, and they have stopped up their ears and have closed their eyes. Otherwise, their eyes would see, their ears would hear, their minds would understand, and they would turn to me, says God, and I would heal them. – Matthew 13:14-15 (TEV)
The thing about hope is that it’s a positive force that shines the most when it’s dark. When everything’s going well, we hardly notice it’s there. But when things go against us, when our dreams fade and when we see no immediate reprieve from our troubles, that’s when hope does its best work for us.
"Where Hope Can Be Found"