Psa. 27:4 One thing I have desired of the LORD,
That will I seek:
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.
As they say “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. We all have our own versions of beauty, a lot of it depends on personal taste. There are some things I think of as especially beautiful. For example, I remember looking out of my window at night flying from London to Nairobi and having my breath taken away by the beauty of the Alps. The full moon, a clear night, and snow covered mountains from 36,000 feet were quite a sight. Another version of beauty for me was found at the Orsay Museum in Paris, I stood awestruck looking at the artwork of Monet. The author of all beauty is The Lord, He also is enthralled with beauty, caught up in beholding His own glory in His beloved Son. Here is how Jonathan Edwards describes God enjoying His own beauty.
“God is happy in beholding the brightness of His own glory; but this glory He beholds in beholding His Son, whom, we are told, is the brightness of His glory, the express image of His Person (Hebrews 1:3). In beholding this perfect, express image, He has an infinitely more perfect view of Himself and the brightness of His own glory that a man has who beholds his own image in a glass. And thus is that God loves and delights in Himself, in that infinite and eternal delight that is between the Father and the Son. And because God’s happiness thus consists in the communion of the Persons of the Trinity, and the love and delight of the Father and the Son in each other, hence the apostle, when speaking of the special happiness of Christians, and how that therein they partake of the happiness of God, mentions the Persons of the Trinity and says, “Our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.”
What is your version of beauty? Whether it is a mountaintop view, the crashing waves of the ocean, a towering home run, or the face of a newborn child; all of these versions of beauty become shadows in the blazing light of beauty found in the face of Jesus Christ. Once you have glimpsed His glory you will know why David had to sing. David was stopped in his tracks by beauty and could not help himself, “One thing have I desired of The Lord and 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”.
