Church letter

May 2023

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Seek out the good and the beautiful

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky.

William Wordsworth

I think all our hearts ‘leap up’ like Wordsworth’s at the sight of a rainbow. It’s so beautiful, so dramatic, in a way so unlikely as it appears in all its glory, often against a dark sky, after rain. It’s also rich with symbolism, starting with God giving it as a sign to Noah, and its many other connotations in our own time.

There are so many things that make our hearts leap up. Some, like the rainbow, are just beautiful in themselves, a joy to behold, while others, apparently quite ordinary, may also bring personal joy. As the saying goes: ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.’ (A saying, by the way, first recorded in the 3rd century BC in Greek!)

What makes your heart leap up? Music? A lovely view? An unexpected gift? There are a random and eclectic assortment of things that ‘do it’ for me. Bare trees silhouetted against the sky, as if they have been drawn with charcoal - my heart leaps up every time I see them. Who can say why? I love shadows, patterns, reflections; beauty found in unexpected places. I never cease to marvel at the intricacies revealed inside a red cabbage!

But to return to the rainbow. As we all know, the rainbow occurs through a combination of rain and sun. Not first one and then the other, but both together. As we go through life, we encounter both good and evil, disappointment and fulfilment, sadness and happiness, joy and grief. These are never completely separate; they are inextricably woven into the fabric of our lives. They are like the double helix, the source of our DNA, made up of two separate strands, wound round each other. Its discovery in 1968 totally revolutionised the understanding of genetics and life itself.

Joy and sorrow, good and evil, hope and despair, faith and doubt. The Psalms, written between 900 and 500BC, are powerful testimony that this is nothing new, but all a part of human life. How do we cope with all this? We talk of ‘glass half full’ people, and those whose glass is always half empty. Perhaps it’s helpful to reflect that for us westerners, living in relative peace and prosperity, however bad things may seem, the glass is never totally empty.

St Paul writes from prison to the Christians at Philippi: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true; whatever is noble; whatever is right; whatever is pure; whatever is lovely; think about these things.”

Those early Christians were constantly confronted, like many of us, with injustice, disappointment and hardship. The antidote? To make a conscious and deliberate effort to seek out the good and the beautiful, even in the most unlikely places, and to add to it by our own words and actions. And if you do this, says Paul, ‘the God of peace will be with you’.

Revd Dr Rosemary Kobus van Wengen, Assistant Priest