Advent Beauty through the Eyes of Faith

“Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear” (Matthew 13:16).

The season of Advent is an opportunity for us to learn how to trust in God’s Word and promises, be patient for God’s fulfillment, and wait for the Lord’s return. In a world that increasingly demands the immediacy of everything from Wi-Fi speed to Amazon packages, Advent slows us down. We’re not ready for Christmas quite yet. If we could just slow down, we might actually see by faith the beauty of our Lord’s creation, redemption, and sanctification for us.

We live in a world that regularly devalues real beauty. Distorting God's creative beauty, it props up appearances, superficiality, and even that which is unholy as being the ideals to strive for. It urges us to follow our personal, selfish desires while sometimes even disguising them as being ordained by God. But every once in a while, real beauty breaks through. In Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis talks about how when he was an atheist, beautiful joy would break into his life on occasion. But he said that joy was always like a stab that left him needing something more. It always carried with it pain and longing because he could not control and experience joy whenever he wanted. The experiences became fewer and farther between. There are many people in this world who long for an endless source of joy and beauty, but they cannot achieve it by their own machinations. It can easily lead down addictive and self-destructive paths that seek to quiet the disquiet of a life devoid of beauty. It was not until Lewis came to see the beauty of His Lord when he finally was at peace. It was much like St. Augustine's prayer to the Lord, “My heart is restless until it finds rest in You.” Christ’s true beauty is not in his appearance but in His redemption of us. His first advent was not beautiful by human standards as He was placed in a manger. At His cross, Jesus “had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2). 

However, with the eyes of faith, we see that Jesus is our Beautiful Savior who died for our sins and was raised from the dead. We cannot see this except by God’s work of bringing us to repentance for our sins through the His Law and delivering forgiveness delivered by the sweet words of the Gospel that Jesus died for us by the preaching of the Word! His sacrificial love is beautiful because it brings the forgiveness of our sins, life, and salvation!

Paul writes of his prayers for the Church in Ephesus,

“I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:16–23). 

This season of Advent, with the eyes of our hearts enlightened by the Word of God, may the Lord prepare us to behold our Savior who in His glory, splendor, and majesty has come to us as a humble baby in a manger. We will look at God’s beautiful creating, redeeming, and sanctifying work for us in Jesus!

“O come, all ye faithful, Joyful and triumphant! 

O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem. 

Come and behold Him, Born the King of angels: 

O come, let us adore Him. O come, let us adore Him.

O come, let us adore Him. Christ the Lord!”

(Lutheran Service Book 379)

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