BEAUTY IS TO THE SPIRIT what food is to the flesh. A glimpse of it in a young face, say, or an echo of it in a song fills an emptiness in you that nothing else under the sun can. Unlike food, however, it is something you never get your fill of. It leaves you always aching with longing not so much for more of the same as for whatever it is, deep within and far beyond both it and yourself, that makes it beautiful.
"The beauty of holiness" is how the Psalms name it (29:2), and "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee" (42:1) is the way they describe the ache and the longing.
- Originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words
