What is your first childhood memory of beauty? (Don’t read mine until you think of your own memory first. Give yourself some time to REALLY think about it!)
I spent the first ten years of my life in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Most Southerners might think that winters in Minnesota are intolerable. But for a child who grew up there, winter is magical: sledding, ice skating on real lakes, building snow forts, making snow angels, ice fishing, and visiting the St. Paul winter carnival with all its carved ice sculptures. I’m telling you, winter in Minnesota is MAGICAL!
My first memory of beauty has to be the frozen falls of the Minnehaha River. In the dead of winter, my parents bundled us up in our snow suits, drove my sisters and me over to the falls where we could walk across the frozen river and actually touch the remarkable forms of frozen water. We were able to look up and see the whole façade of the frozen wall with its mighty motion stopped by time and cold. It was ever so much bigger than me. I could not touch the whole thing. At the tender age of four, I was in awe of the greatness around me.
This scripture from Revelation makes me feel like that. A day will come in the future when I will be able to see the greatness of God’s final creation. I will walk into it, touch it, and be surrounded by it. There will be no beauty on earth that can even come close to what God has in store for us!