Shadows of Beauty

Hello everyone! It’s Amelia writing today. School started up for me about a month ago, and, before my English class began, we were instructed to read an essay called The Weight of Glory by C. S. Lewis. This essay was extremely influential to me and, on my second read-through, it seemed like I underlined every page. If you haven’t read it yet, I would highly recommend, but in today’s post I wanted to talk about one topic discussed in the essay that struck me the most.

The essay is primarily about “the weight of glory”, but it also touches on how we think that desires are bad, when, in reality, we desire too little. We are content with the things of this world when there is so much more infinite beauty beyond it. “We are far too easily pleased.” (26) as Lewis put it.

I find that I am often too content with the beauty I find on earth, and I don’t always stop to think about the origins of where that beauty came from. The essay stated that, “The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing.” (30) Because Mattie and I have a blog that mainly talks about books, it is easy to get carried away with the love of stories and forget that they aren’t everything. Stories, however beautiful they might be, are just a shadow of the beauty found beyond our world.

When I read C. S. Lewis’ thoughts on this, I was struck by the way that I have almost been trusting in these forms of entertainment. I find myself praising the beauty itself, instead of the One who created it.

For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.

– C. S. Lewis

The next time you sit down to read, watch, or engage in any sort of entertainment, remember that these things are only shadows, only glimpses, of the true beauty found in Christ. They are meant to give us a taste for that true beauty and coax us to long for something more, not to be content with the good things we find in our time here.

I hope we can all strive, with everything we do, to make art that brings a longing for a more perfect beauty to come. And that, each time we engage with others’ art, we will be searching for these glimpses of God’s goodness in a way that makes our hearts thirst to know Him better.

Thanks for reading! Have you read this essay? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

– Amelia