A few weeks ago, I stood in front of our hutch, fashioning dried orange slices into garlands and Christmas tree ornaments. It was an unusually quiet moment in our home, Elijah having taken the kids out for a bit. As I hung the translucent slices on the tree, pleased with the soft glow and old-fashioned simplicity they added, a familiar wave of desperation washed over me. I longed to freeze the moment, to forever preserve the small bit of beauty in front of me.
I’d brushed up against this feeling before, but this was the first time I was able to put my finger on it. It’s a sneaky sort of discouragement that arises in the moments after I’ve rearranged a bookshelf or hung a pretty art print on the wall or potted summery flowers for our porch. A low-lying anxiety simmers even as I survey my work, delighting in the accomplishment of order and beauty before me:
I find such joy in this work, but it’s so fleeting and temporal. I know it won’t last. Why does this effort even matter if I can’t hold onto it?
And it’s true. Despite my best efforts, the work of my hands won’t last forever. That bookshelf will get dusty and jumbled, I may decide to hang the print elsewhere, and eventually, those jaunty flowers will die.
But this shouldn’t deter us from crafting beauty, order, and good things from the raw materials of everyday life. As Christians, we have the utmost confidence that our work is never in vain. We can work and create in hope, because God imbues our smallest tasks and glimmers of creativity with the reality of His life and purposes. This gives true meaning to our work, no matter how temporal or unseen.
If my sole aim is to craft beauty for beauty’s sake, then I will be disheartened and discouraged over the heaping laundry basket, the shattered teacup, the endless crumbs under the table. But if I can see the beauty and order I crave as a vehicle for His reality being communicated in our home, then it’s no longer up to me to desperately preserve what I create. The work of my hands can simply can serve its purpose, regardless of its temporality.
C. S. Lewis wrote in The Weight of Glory:
The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.
As Lewis said, the good and beautiful things do not in themselves contain the fulfillment we long for. They serve as a mere whisper of God’s glory meant to direct our gaze to Him.
I packed away our Christmas decorations over the weekend, though the greenery and orange garlands will stay through the winter. But eventually even those will be tucked away as when spring comes. Then it will be time to begin the work of adding touches of springtime beauty to our home.
Friends, we’ve all been given a place and provision for creativity. May we defy the darkness and despair around us, working and creating in hope, always with an eye toward eternity.
Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.
Colossians 3: 23-24
If you have been afraid that your love of beautiful flowers and the flickering flame of the candle is somehow less spiritual than living in starkness and ugliness, remember that He who created you to be creative gave you the things with which to make beauty and the sensitivity to appreciate and respond to His creation.
Edith Schaeffer, The Hidden Art of Homemaking
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