Presence and Beauty

I've been reading "Garden City: Work, Rest, and the Art of Being Human". I love how Comer frames how we spend our time as a way to make God's presence and beauty visible. For me, that looks like strengthening my body as Katherine and I go to the gym together. It looks like savoring the one Arkansas Black apple that survived this year (unlike the bumper crop we had recently). It also looks like one of my cello student's parents getting out of her car week after week to delight in the beautiful monarchs that continue to flock to our lantana and zinnias. 

"The Anglican writer John Stott said the kind of work we're called to is 'The expenditure of energy (manual or mental or both) in the service of others, which brings fulfillment to the worker, benefit to the community, and glory to God.'

Most of us get the first part of that definition: 'Fulfilment to the worker' -- ideally, your work should be a vocation, a calling, work that you feel God made you to do and that you love. And a lot of us get the second part: 'Benefit to the community' -- it should make the world into a more Garden-like place. But what about 'glory to God'? How do we do that?

Well, if God's glory is his presence and beauty, then, as I see it, we glorify God by reshaping the raw materials of the world in such a way that, for those with eyes to see, God's presence and beauty are made visible." ~John Mark Comer