I went for a walk this weekend with my love. Sunday morning early, we left her childhood home where we were visiting her parents and walked for about three miles along the familiar roads around her house. Familiar more to her than me, of course. I was the interloper, not having grown up on the mountain, not having lived in the same basic area from the age of seven until I went away to school. Celia told me the other day when she thinks of home, this mountain and this house is the image in her mind.
We call it a mountain, but it’s really more a large, bluffy, hill in northeast Alabama, straddling the line between that state and Georgia. It is a rural area, and on our morning walk we heard some glorious music emanating from the trees that surrounded us and, alternating with cow pastures and farm land, lined the country roads down which we walked. I couldn’t tell you exactly what was doing the singing that morning, other than that they were birds. Birds, along with their music, are a collective for me. I could probably tell some of the songs apart if I noticed them that way, but I don’t. For my wife, each bird’s song is distinctive and unique, and as we walked she would call out some of the singers. Do you hear the mourning dove? Listen to that robin; isn’t it beautiful?
Once brought to my attention, of course, I could tell the difference in the songs these birds were singing. The thing is, I had never paid attention the way my wife has. The same with flowers; I know some are red, or yellow, or purple, or some mixture of colors, and I recognize the beauty of each different expression of God’s glory, but I couldn’t name them the way my wife can. See the honeysuckle? And look, there’s some Japanese privet! We saw purple irises, daisies, vetch, purple clover, and some buttercups scattered in the pastures we walked past. All beautiful, each in their own way, and all unnamed by me, but known and named by my wife.
I learned something important that morning. I learned it’s not the beauty alone that gives these works of natural art their value, but the uniqueness of each expression of beauty. Each song, unique to the bird that sings it, and each specific pattern of color, unique to the flower that wears it, is even more beautiful because the expression is theirs and theirs alone. Their song, their glorious color, is their own individual contribution to the praise of the universe showering our world in glory. The same way every individual song is more than just generic “music,” each individual bird and flower is more than just “beauty.”
It must also be true, then, that each individual person is more than just another “life.” Each of us, with the songs we sing, the words we write, the art we create, the deeds we perform—we are each a unique expression added to all the expressions of praise and affirmations of life that make up our world. That painting is a Rembrandt. That symphony is Beethoven’s Ninth. That poem is Frost’s most poignant. Those are obvious cases, but what about these:
That’s just the way Krista is; her gift is encouragement. Or . . .
I can tell when Pastor Nate is preaching, the sermon is always so thoughtfully constructed. Or . . .
Hugh is so gifted on the piano; his music just lifts me to heaven! Or . . .
Amy has such a unique ability to see things from a different perspective, and then to explain that so that anyone can understand. Or . . .
Kev is just so humble and unassuming; he calms my soul even when I am stressed. Or . . .
You could fill pages and pages with lists of people and their unique characteristics, naming them, and in the naming recognizing their particular, unrepeatable, beauty. You know something? You’re in the list, too, with your particular set of talents, your interests and skills, your life experiences, all blending together to create something extremely rare and valuable . . . And beautiful.
My wife named the beauty we saw on our walk this weekend, and the naming increased the beauty because it reminded me of the value of uniqueness. Your beauty, your expressions of praise, which only you can offer in the way you do, have also been noted—and named—by the Father. Everyone around you has had the same blessing of being named for their uniqueness. It is good to see and to hear, and even better to name and appreciate, every single expression of beauty we experience in our lives. Thank you for sharing you with the world.
