Why do We Love the Beauty of Nature?

Every time I go to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula I am blown away by the natural splendor of the area. There is so much undisturbed wilderness to see: pristine waterfalls, clear, blue lakes, and miles upon miles of serene forests. The more I remember my trips to the UP, the more I miss that peace and beauty, and the more I long to find it again. Looking back on these memories has also given me a question to ponder:

Why are we drawn to beauty? Why do we love a sunset, and take joy in a walk along a beach? What gives us a sensation of awe when we see a vast mountain range, or visit the splendor of a waterfall? I have never met a person who has not been amazed by something in nature. People are transfixed by it; we cannot get enough of it. We take pictures of it and mount them to our walls. We buy higher quality cameras to try to capture it, but no image can to ever do it justice. Our world offers us views and feelings that seem too extraordinary to put into words and far too stunning to capture in pictures. Nature’s beauty beckons us, as if we belong to it, or possibly with it. We seek to follow her calling because we desire that splendor, that majesty. But why?

Maybe we seek beauty because we do not always see it. It seems sometimes that we are drowning in the ugliness of our world. Even though we get many glimpses of nature’s splendor, we always find ourselves gazing at all of the world’s evil. This is to be expected, of course, seeing as our world is under the dreadful curse of sin. Sin ruins everything, even a beautifully created world. But God is so great that He made our world in such a way that there is still beauty even among the ugliness. So, yes, in a way we long for nature’s splendor because we are tired of the world’s more bitter views. But it seems there is a stronger pull to beauty than just our weariness of being witnesses of evil. Our love for beauty doesn’t come from our hatred of evil, but our hatred of evil stems from our love for beauty.

This stronger pull, or calling towards natural beauty can be explained in one verse of the Bible: Ecclesiastes 3:11, “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” Beauty and eternity; possibly the two strongest desires humans long to fulfill put into one verse, and I don’t think it is coincidence. I think in this verse we find our answer to why we long for nature’s splendor. In these few sentence we see why it is that we love a blue ocean, a green forest, and a purple lilac. People seek to find beauty because we know that it is in the beauty of eternity and the splendor of the recreated Eden where we truly belong. The majesty of nature we see in this world are glimpses of the eternity we will spend in the next. Our maker placed a desire for beauty deep within our souls, and this desire will not be fulfilled until we are there in perfect beauty and indescribable magnificence with Him.

*Image Sources: https://naturefully.wordpress.com/2016/09/05/pictured-rocks-located-in-the-upper-peninsula-of-michigan-4928-x-3264-oc/

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