The Eye of the Beholder

 

 

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Yet how often do we miss what is beautiful around us? We look at the pictures of film stars, perfectly exposed and air brushed -yet in real life they look a lot rougher than they appear in their perfect photographs. Maybe the exception to that rule was the late Audrey Hepburn, witness her popularity on fashion accessories even today.
How often do we miss what is before us because we have become used to it?
I spent 11 years in a beautiful glen in Perthshire called Glenshee .It was stunning scenery but by 11 years we had got used to it.
Then we moved to my next parish and when we got to the manse there, there were boards over the window to protect the glass. We looked through cracks and at the time on the TV there were scenes from Kosovo with houses boarded up just like ours. Day after day we thought of the lovely walk in the hills we had left and the scenery, to move to this? In the end we were able to see the beauty in our new place, a lot of which was in the people and the joy of it having a cricket team.
The picture above is like something out of the Beatles Sgt Pepper Album in fact it is oil on a pavement but if it is dealt with the right way and caught in the right light it can turn into something beautiful - bit like the way God looks at us.