Missionary doctor Margaret Brand wrote of the time that her young son, Christopher, was outside playing in the hill country of India toward sunset time. “Suddenly he rushed in excitedly. [He] seized my hand,” she related, “and tried to drag me outside as he almost shouted, ‘Come see the sky. It’s unnecessarily beautiful!’

“I don’t know how he’d learned that long word, but he pronounced it so correctly,” she commented, “and his words have stayed with me ever since.”[1]

Truly God has created the world so unnecessarily beautiful.

Think about your life for a moment. What unnecessary beauty has God brought to you where you live? Something as simple as a stunning rose? Spectacular lightning? A darling, giggling baby?

Perhaps you have to look deeper for unnecessary beauty. It could be that God has blessed you by allowing your mate to survive a serious illness, giving you more wonderful years together than you ever thought possible. Perhaps God’s unnecessary beauty in your life is so basic as having food to eat that you like, not just what keeps you alive. I mean, did you ever thank God for chocolate?

The Old Testament prophet Isaiah foretold some 700 years before Jesus was born that He would some day come to earth, and that He would be appointed…

to comfort all who mourn…,
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair. (Isaiah 61:2-3)

Take a moment right now to thank Him for some specific beauty that He has blessed you with—unnecessary beauty, perhaps–above and beyond anything you ever expected.

[1] Vision for God by Dr. Margaret E. Brand with Dr. James L. Jost (Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House Publishers, 2006), 108.