Gratitude for Beauty

No matter where we live, beauty can be found. Trees, grass, flowers, hills, mountains, water, sky… Natural, God-made beauty is all around us. Beauty can also be found in paintings, drawings, sculptures, writings, music, film, photography, handwork, design… SO much beauty around us!

But do we take the time to slow down and appreciate or even notice it? I know I can be guilty of blazing right through my days without stopping to smell the roses. It’s all too easy to do. May I challenge each of us this week to do some intentional slowing down? Let’s encourage our families and ourselves to purposely look for beauty all around us, then point it out to someone else, and give spoken gratitude for it.

Ask your kids to look around your home, your yard, your neighborhood, or your city and list some things that are beautiful to them. And then you do the same! Make it an activity as you’re driving from place to place this week–to look out the windows and pay attention to the beauty all around us. This might be an especially good week for it, as many people are traveling out of town for Thanksgiving. Slow down, look up, and take notice. Don’t miss all the beauty as you are going “over the river and through the woods.”