Beautiful Formation…but Perilous

Ice storms are unusual in my sliver of the United States. So the arrival of a “historic ice storm” this past month caused quite a stir. This particular storm turned out to be as bad as advertised. Schools were out for days on end, businesses were closed, and church services canceled as people throughout the region hunkered down until the weather warmed a bit. The damage was significant. An inch of freezing rain brought down a forest of trees and branches, causing many to lose power for a long stretch of time. Arctic cold combined with the power outages proved deadly for some of those who were ill-equipped to find alternative heat sources. At least one man living alone in a mountain community was discovered frozen to death in his house. More than 80 people died from this wide-spread catastrophe. But the scenery was just so beautiful.

Perilous beauty raises questions.

That thought gave me pause as our neighborhood slowly thawed, the power was restored, and the damage was cleared. As a child of God who believes in both his sovereignty and his goodness, how should I think of this juxtaposed beauty and destruction seen in his creation?

The morning after the ice silently settled in, I gingerly went for a walk around the block. Every blade of grass was encased in its own crystallized coffin. The drooping tree branches of the evergreens shown sparkling green. Icicles hung down over practically every overhanging surface. And when the harsh, winter sun struck the ice-covered branches of the leafless trees, they scattered light with sparkling brilliance. So beautiful…but so perilous.

Several years ago, our family traveled to Arizona to see the Grand Canyon for the first time. Long story, but we pretty much had the entire national park to ourselves. At my wife’s urging (because all of the boys in our family would have opted for more sleep), we roused ourselves and traveled to the South Rim in plenty of time to see the sun rise. The stunning view was well worth the loss of sleep (at least to the parents!) But a surprising lesson stuck with us. Formed by a global flood, the Grand Canyon stands as an enduring reminder of God’s catastrophic judgment of mankind’s wickedness. And yet the rugged beauty of that deep natural wonder evokes awe in the 5 million people who visit it annually. God stamped a human catastrophe with remarkable beauty. So beautiful…but so perilous.

Perilous beauty reveals God’s ways.

Here are three considerations regarding this tension.

1) God doesn’t shy away from owning the beauty and the peril of his creation.

Take ice storms for example. “He hurls down his crystals of ice like crumbs; who can stand before his cold?” (Psalm 147:17). Those glorious crystals are his. So is the bone-chilling cold. God claims them in his powerfully correcting speech to Job: “Has the rain a father, or who has begotten the drops of dew? From whose womb did the ice come forth, and who has given birth to the frost of heaven? The waters become hard like stone, and the face of the deep is frozen.” (Job 38:28-30). We might be uncomfortable assigning blame to God for these kinds of disasters – but God isn’t.

2) God always stands above our full comprehension of beautiful and perilous events.

This might seem to side step the question, but we can’t get around the pointed logic of God himself in Isaiah 55:8-9: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” While I might be able to speculate as to God’s reasons, I can’t ultimately explain why God allowed a beautiful ice storm to wreak havoc on my beloved Western North Carolina. Neither can I explain why God chose a world-wide flood as his instrument of judgment on mankind in the days of Noah, drastically reforming the earth’s topography into canyons and mountains and freshwater lakes. We are limited; God is not. Which leads to a third observation…

3) God’s mercy and justice often show up together.

As I gazed out at the beautifully chaotic landscape of ice and falling branches, this truth about God stood out in sharp relief. Paul observes that believers groan under the effects of the fall; and creation groans with us (Romans 8:22). God’s amazing creation under the curse of sin and death does not please him. Death and destruction weren’t even in the picture until Adam and Eve rebelled. Can God wield the fallenness of creation to punish, correct, and rebuke? Certainly. It’s just that we humans are in no position to determine how and when he does that. But even as God incorporates chaos into his divine purposes, he places beauty nearby as a reminder of his mercy. Death and destruction reside as our present reality, but it will not always be so. Our bodies will one day be redeemed – along with all creation (Romans 8:23).

In the meantime, God plants beautiful symbols of mercy in unexpected places. Flamboyant flowers pushing up through a lava field. Layers of colored shale in a canyon. Diamonds in a mine shaft. Spring green in a charred forest. Ice encased trees. Our Redeemer on a cross. Where “steadfast love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and peace kiss each other” (Psalm 85:10). How perilous. But, oh how beautiful.

Image by prosperitymentr from Pixabay