HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, September 29, 2024 – As born-again believers, we’re well-acquainted with the many characteristics attributed to God our Father. We know that he’s perfect, we know that he’s all-knowing, we know that he’s righteous, we know that he’s holy.

But do we know that he’s beautiful?

Because scripture tells us that God is beautiful. In Psalm 27, David says that the one thing he desires more than anything else is to “dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of [his] life, to behold the beauty of the Lord.”

Not much else is written about God’s beauty in scripture, because other than for Jesus and a select few (like Adam and Eve, Moses, Abraham, maybe Noah, and Stephen just before he was martyred), no-one has seen God. Paul says: “now we see through a glass, darkly”, but John says that when we get to Heaven, we’ll see God “as he is”. We’ll see God’s perfect beauty that in its perfection and by very definition of who and what God is exceeds every other form and type of beauty. In other words, no-one and nothing can be more beautiful than God.

I don’t know about you, but I love beauty. I’m drawn to it, not in a vain or lascivious way, but because beautiful things and beautiful people are a pleasure to look at – to “behold”, as David puts it. We know that God’s holy angels – the sons of God – are beautiful, and we know (because Jesus tells us) that if and when we get to Heaven, we (the children of God) will be like the holy angels, which means we, too, will be beautiful like them. God gave us a love and appreciation for beauty not only for our own pleasure during our time on Earth but as a foretaste and promise of Heaven.

Even in this temporal place of imperfection and decay, we can still behold God’s beauty “through the glass, darkly”. David and Paul tell us so. And I know (because God is my Dad and we talk all the time) that God has luxuriantly long silky-soft curly hair that’s so white it glows and shines and smells like nothing you’ve ever smelled on Earth, the scent is so perfectly beautiful.

God doesn’t talk about his own beauty – why would he? We know that when Jesus walked the earth in human form, he wasn’t particularly attractive, but when he was glorified, he became beautiful. Not as beautiful as God, mind you, but second only to God in beauty. God is the most beautiful and Jesus is the second-most beautiful. We know this is true because the Father, as the Gospel teaches us, is greater than Jesus.

We know that God’s beauty is perfect because God is perfect and there is no flaw in him. And if God is perfect, his beauty is perfect. We can draw no other conclusion.

I don’t know about you, but even as I behold God now in my mind’s eye, I can’t wait for that glorious day when I’ll see my beautiful Father as he is.