“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but…they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of the tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.” —C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
ENGAGING BEAUTY taught by Alex Malaska – Coming Soon
Let me say something up front: Beauty defies explanation. When you try to describe it, it slips right through your fingers. No, engaging beauty is much more like listening to a great story than it is like studying a textbook. It must be apprehended rather than mastered; it is something that must be entered into. It is paradox—knowable, yet mysterious, elusive.
This class is primarily about gaining vision. That is,it is about growing in our ability to see the beauty of God, in his person itself, and glowing all around us in his created world. As we will see (and as C.S. Lewis hinted at in the above quote), God has literally rigged creation so that echoes of his glory are everywhere. As we grow in our ability to perceive beauty, to hear those echoes, we will find we are also growing in desire. In this class we will study what is means to hunger and thirst well, and how longing is a prerequisite for joy, just as hunger is a prerequisite to being filled. I invite you to join me on this journey!
“I want deliberately to encourage this mighty longing after God. The lack of it has brought us to our present low estate. The stiff and wooden quality about our spiritual lives is a result of our lack of holy desire. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted. To bad that with many of us he waits so long, so very long, in vain . . .” —A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God
”For God is infinitely the greatest Being, so he is allowed to be infinitely the most beautiful and excellent: and all the beauty to be found throughout the whole creation, is but the reflection of the diffused beams of that Being who hath an infinite fullness of brightness and glory; God . . . is the foundation and fountain of all being and all beauty.” —Jonathan Edwards, The Nature of True Virtue
For more information about this class email Alex Malaska at: alexmalaska@gmail.com