8th August

(God) has made everything beautiful in its time. He also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fanthom what God has done from beginning to end. Ecclesiastes 3, 11

You are the most excellent of men and your lips have been anointed with grace, since God has blessed you for ever. Psalm 45, 2

Longing for something else

Everybody is sensitive to beauty. For some of us it is the grace of childhood and for others it is the violence of sea or the gleaming splendour from a mountain top. Beauty has a deep echo within us. However, it is strange that the feeling of beauty often goes together with a note of sadness, of imperceptible regret, as if beauty would wake up a desire for something else within us than what this world offers; as if this universal call of beauty would be an indication for another reality.

A second sign of this reality which goes beyond what is visible is something what we could call the sense for good. Even if we do not always do good, we respect honesty, righteousness and devotion. On the contrary, we are deeply offensed by treachoury and cruelty. This is how we speak about crimes against humanity. We exactly know that good is something noble; let us say: something divine.

There is certainly an answer for this longing for beauty and truth. We have the intuition. The Bible reveals to us that Jesus Christ has these qualities. In history a man took place who spoke a language which was understood by those whom he associated with. He explained God's character with words which we can understand. He said: " I am the way and the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except by me" (John 14, 6).