Children

March 12

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives. Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein may have been one of the smartest men to ever live but I think he is wrong when it comes to his assessment of the pursuit of truth and beauty. He is wrong to relegate some of life's most worthwhile endeavors to the activities of childhood.

Children play, children run and cry and demand their way, but they rarely pursue truth and are discriminating when it comes to discerning beauty only in that their mommy is, in their eyes, the most beautiful, perfect creature on earth! And the Word tells us, “When I was a child, I thought as a child…but when I became a man, I put away childish things,” I Corinthians 13:11.

The real pursuit of truth and beauty is a never-ending sphere of activity in which people who desire to be Christ-like in their own lives endeavor to discern His reality in the things of time—in the things they understand with their minds and in the things they see with their eyes. This is not child's play; this is at times a real life or death matter that must be engaged in earnestly.

We know all truth is in Christ, for He has said of Himself, "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man comes to the Father but by Me," John 14:6. We know there is no error in Him, there is no subtlety; there is no guile. He says what He means and He means what He says. In a world steeped in deception, He is our one anchor to truth. In a world that worships at the shrine of beauty, He is the one beautiful person to live among us and reveal true loveliness to us.

He has shown us that true beauty is a matter of the soul and not of the physical. He has shown us that truth and beauty complement one another for they each affirm the person-hood of the one who seeks them. In Jesus, we discover that Heaven's radiance has come to earth to reveal not only the mind of God to us but to reveal His heart to us. When we see the mind and heart of God, we see the only truth there is and the only beauty there is.

We see all the best of life in the truth and beauty of Jesus. With that in mind, perhaps Einstein is correct, for the Lord said that to attain heaven we must become as little children (Matthew 18:3). If Einstein is correct and seeking truth and beauty is the occupation of children, may we remain forever young and forever absorbed in the task of not only finding but living and walking in truth and beauty!