by Joanne Wiklund
Word person that I am, I get curious about definitions.The word beautiful was bugging me off and on this week. My dictionary defines it as an adjective:
pleasing the senses or mind aesthetically: beautiful poetry | a beautiful young woman| the mountains were calm and beautiful. • of a very high standard; excellent: she spoke in beautiful English | the house had been left in beautiful order.
Thinking of seeing things as beautiful, I wonder if the word is overworked. It’s often a gift, a word gift, when someone tells you that you were beautiful in some way or another. I know I’m not as beautiful as a fresh baby, a bride, a groom, a ten year old boy. Do we have to differentiate when we describe someone or something as beautiful? How often do we say something is beautiful and compare it to something else? Or can we just say beautiful and mean it? What does the word beautiful mean to you? Do you compare it to something when you say something is beautiful or do you just let it stand for what it is? Truth, Faith, Hope, Love are all beautiful words. They stand alone. But Beautiful is really like Truth, especially, because we know that Jesus is the Truth. He gives us all the rest of those lovely things. We are told to “think on those things.”
Psalm 27:4 “One thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.”
Philippians 4:8-9 “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. 9. Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you.”