Beauty all Around Us

When I was in high school, I sort of believed in God because my parents did. I wasn't just going through the motions. I mean, I felt the Spirit and I was happy doing what I was doing but I didn't feel it in my bones. It wasn't who I WAS. It was just sort of something I thought seemed good and made sense.

When I started college at BYU, I was expecting a miraculous experience. After all, I'd spent my entire life as an outsider. The only Mormon (or one of very few) at my school. Finally I would be part of a majority. Surrounded by people who believed just as I did.

I was very disappointed.

Not because the BYU kids were bad. Not because they were boring. In fact, I don't think it had much to do with them at all. I was alone for the first time and something shocking hit me. I didn't really want to go to church. I had buckets of reasons, ranging from being tired to feeling sick (I got mono) but the real reason was this: I didn't have a real testimony.

During my second semester, I decided to give this thing a real try. I'd start from the beginning. "Is there a God?"  I'd do everything they tell me in Sunday school, including church attendance, prayer, scripture reading and contemplation daily. I gave myself one month to figure that one thing out.

The month came and went with no clear answer. Maybe there wasn't a God. After all, He'd never spoken to me. He hadn't sent me any clear messages. Maybe because He didn't really exist. My reading slacked off. I skipped a Sunday.

Then one morning I woke up inexplicably early. It was cold. I dragged myself out of bed and walked to my crack of dawn (er, 10 am) class. On the way something touched my heart. I know it now for the Spirit, but at the time it felt unfamiliar. I am sure it had spoken to me lots over the past months but I hadn't been tuned in. That morning my heart opened and I really looked around me. I saw trees just beginning to have buds. I saw bugs scuttling around. I saw the sun in the sky and I just knew. God had created the beauty all around me. He lived. I got a little bonus that morning. Something I hadn't even asked to know. God loved me. Little old doubting me. Lazy, wanting to sleep in every day and coast through life me. He loved me and he had plans for me.

I can't say I've always been tuned in for the messages He sends and I can't say I always look for the beauty around me, but I can say I have continued to look in the intervening years and I've never been let down when my eyes were open.

I am in Italy right now on vacation. I've seen beautiful things in the past few days. Lots of gorgeous and moving art, including the David. Nothing has touched me so deeply as a painting I saw near the exit in the Uffizi. It's dark dark. I snapped a photo with my real camera and so I'll have to add it here later but it's Christ wearing the crown of thorns and being mocked but prior to His crucifixion. It spoke to my heart. I could see in his face the love He had for the world and the deep and profound sorrow He felt that we are all so confused and lost here in this life. Oh how He loves us.  Oh how grateful I am for that love.

It reminded me that although not everyone around me is Mormon, although not all of us believe in God in precisely the same form, He loves us all. There is beauty all around us if only we will look. And we will see His face in all the beauty if we will open our eyes and look for it. I pray we all can look and find Him this week.