Psalm 45:2 (RSV)
You are the most fairest of the sons of men; grace is poured upon your lips; therefore God has blessed you forever.
How often do you find yourself singing:
“My beloved is, the most beautiful, among thousands and thousands…”
Then with an open heart, you proceed to fervently cry out:
“Yeshua ahh ah ah, ahh ah ah”
If indeed you acknowledge that He is the most beautiful, why aren’t you enamored by His resplendent perfection? Why doesn’t the sight of Him completely captivate you, entrance you, leave you mesmerized and in awe? Why do you spare Him but a passing glance?
And yet, He calls you to gaze at Him;
Isaiah 26:3 (ESV)
You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.
A gaze represents a fixed and prolonged look, with the mind completely absorbed in that which is looked at. It is a look of eagerness, a curious and consistent searching out with your mind that which is before you.
Gazing involves the mind, all of the mind because you might as well be staring blankly, seeing nothing ,beholding nothing.
Gazing is a call to stillness. You can only gaze when you are still. As you gaze at something, you behold the very essence of it. All your prejudices and biases fall away , because as you behold a thing, you see it for what it truly is. You know it.
He calls you to gaze at Him because He has already gazed at you. He beheld you, yet unformed in your mother’s womb. It is He that knit together your most inward parts. He is well acquainted with your ways. Your sitting down and your rising up. The multitude of your thoughts, He discernest the lot of them. He has sought you out — and He has known you.
How will you love Him that you have not gazed upon long enough to know? How will you get to see the One who sees you?
Gaze at the Word. Gaze at the Word Incarnate. Gaze at Him. And then gaze again. And then gaze some more. And then keep gazing.
That the one thing that you ask of Him, that you seek after; is that you may dwell in His house all the days of your life. That you may gaze at His beauty and inquire in His temple.
And in Him, even as with an unveiled face you behold His glory, you are being changed into His likeness from one degree of glory to another.
He calls you to seek His face, but what happens when the Ancient of Days finally turns and faces you? What happens when you find the face of God? When you gaze at the perfection of all that is True and Beautiful, into the eyes of your Maker, into the depths of the Eternal?
You behold the undying love that lies therein, the same love that offered up His only Beloved for you.
Even in the same breath, as with a smiling face He commends you, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
The truly beautiful, the most beautiful, there is something so objectively powerful about that, that it rearranges you. You don’t sit in judgement of The Beautiful, He judges you.
~Maera Angella