A Hidden Beauty

Further away than most can imagine, beyond the carefully constructed images broadcast around the world, sits an ancient stone atop a regal perch. For countless years this stone has stood witness to the spectacle of God’s creative brilliance. Day beyond number have cast its wandering shadow across the landscape, a testimony to the sheer power of God’s enduring word. The stone is clothed in ochre red, a brilliant protest against the azure sky that casts a blanket of suppression over the land and is stitched seamlessly into an unbroken line where the two meet. Below the ancient stone, a throne of fissured rock falls away in fearful wonder to jade depths of tepid water rich with life.

This is the Australian Outback. Immortalised by European poets for over two centuries, but first recorded by an ancient people who etched and imprinted its story into the very escarpments they lived beneath. This was my childhood home.

The land invites exploration, it calls to you from every hidden corner with a voice that echoes just beyond reach. It is a land rich with wander-lust, a meandering desire to see what may rest beyond the next horizon. But you will never find it. There is a mystery here, ancient but throbbing with life. Artists and poets alike, both ancient and new, have fought to find the images that will finally capture and subdue this aged mystery. But they have failed. Instead, they have only drawn to the surface a fragment, a piece to the puzzle, that does not slake our lust to know, but only fuels it. We see a refracted beauty, and dream of its source, wondering at where this beauty was birthed, so we refill our packs and set off once again.

Searching. Exploring. Turning over stone, descending every precipice, wading every stream, looking for beauty.

But is beauty only made in the discovery? Is something only beautiful when it is admired? Or does beauty exist beyond our naming of it?

There is a God who spoke this ancient stone into existence, when the first dawn broke over this landscape, when the ochre red rejoiced at its own birth. No explorers were there to sketch it, no photographer to capture its light. When God commanded that stone to stand as a sentinel, or that the twisting white branches of the Gum Tree entangle the sweeping clouds, no human eye gazed on this wonder and was lost in worship. There was just the Maker. It was simply God and his Creation.

“Evening came and then morning: the third day.” (Genesis 1:13, CSB)

And it was good.

When Adam stepped into the garden of God’s delight, it was already good. When God asked the crowning jewel of his Creation to name what he saw, it did not require our validation, just our enjoyment. Even sin’s allure was simply a distortion of what was already desirable.

“The woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” (Genesis 3:6, CSB)

The tree had always been delightful to look at, even before her eyes had seen it, but the hook had been set, the bait was compelling, and the rest is history.

I’ve long since moved away from those wide and sweeping plains of masked beauty, yet they still entrap my imagination. The inscribed land of the far north, the winding rivers of the Gulf Country, the red soil and scented air still conceal a hidden yearning. Yet in the years that stretch between then and now, I discovered another beauty, a spring from which my thirst is met. For though I still hold a deep desire for the beauty of this Creation, I have fallen in love with the hands that first shaped it. The hidden source of beauty has been found, for from the well of beauty has beauty been born.

“For everything was created by him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities— all things have been created through him and for him.” (Colossians 1:16, CSB)

“For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen.” (Romans 11:36, CSB)

In my tireless childhood adventures, I found countless ancient stones resting on thrones that overlooked deep rivers; but now I have found Jesus. God has revealed himself, no longer a masked beauty hinted at by ancient law and prophets, or by dazzling displays of far-off galaxies, he is fully revealed in the Christ; Jesus—the agent and goal of all Creation.

So look through the wonder of the world he has shaped, and see the hands that were pierced. He is beautiful.