03/31/2024
My family likes to take the occasional day away from our regular responsibilities and just be together. This generally involves some sort of hike, walking through nature, or enjoying the outdoors, and yesterday was no exception.
Tyler, Texas, is known for two things: roses in the summer and fall and azaleas in the spring. There is a section of downtown houses where the beds spill over with beautiful pink, red, and white blooms. If the flowers weren’t so delicate, it’d be a wonder that the bushes could hold so many blossoms. The yards are manicured and even explorable, boasting rock walls, small fountains, quaint garden sheds, and little benches. As you sit and look around, beautiful colors fill your eyes from one side to the other.
Such beauty is easy to appreciate. You might marvel at the variety of flowers, even among the azaleas themselves. You might wonder how much landscaping goes into manicuring such precision along the paths, even cutting grass and edged lines along the sidewalks. You find yourself lingering, strolling through the veritable paradise.
At the end of The Last Battle, CS Lewis’s final book in the Narnia series, the characters enter Old Narnia, a place beyond the mountains and the home of Aslan, the great Lion Redeemer, and Savior of the stories. One of the characters says, “The reason why we loved the Old Narnia is that it sometimes look a little like this.” This is what I wonder when I find myself sitting among the beauty of nature. When I see the far-reaching horizon from a mountain precipice, watching the clouds roll across the sky or sometimes roll across the valley, I wonder if there are great mountains and clouds in heaven. When I listen to the waves gently crash against the shoreline, almost like listening to the earth’s heartbeat, while sitting on the soft sand of a Florida beach, I wonder if those soothing sounds will be a part of heaven. When I walk through the woods, catching peeking squirrels out of the corner of my eyes, feeling the crunch of the leaves as I walk along the trail, cautiously stepping over rocks and roots, watching the light flitter through the trees and dance across the ground, I wonder about walking down the golden streets of God. When I walk among the flowers of a manicured yard, observing how perfectly familiar it seems even though the yard is unique, I wonder if heaven’s landscaping will make it appear inviting.
Truth be told, heaven will be so much grander. Earth’s best is a glimpse of heaven’s most mundane, which is far beyond anything we can imagine (Eph 3.20). It is so good that our worst suffering will be completely worth the trouble when we experience just one moment of heaven’s glory (Rom 8.18). The best of earth’s beauty is nothing compared to the room we will have in God’s house (Joh 14.1-6).
As I walk through the landscaped yards of Tyler filled with azaleas, or the magnificent rose garden in Birmingham, the lovely Bok Tower of Florida, or the fields of bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes, I can appreciate the work that goes into making these places possible. But the best horticulturists in the world are still working with limits. They only use what is seen, what God already made, what is here today and gone tomorrow (2 Cor 4.16-18).
God, the Creator of these beauties, is making something even better, something eternal, something so beautiful that it will be a marvel that never grows old. The reason we love what we see today is that it is a reminder of the something better we will see in the eternal day.
While we know the most beautiful thing on earth cannot be compared with the beauty of heaven, we can also understand that the most beautiful thing in heaven will not compare with the majesty of seeing God’s face.
