What do you look at? What do you gaze at in enjoyment and wonder? Is it your child when they score a goal? Is it the face of your loved one in the morning? Is it the sunset or sunrise that strikes you with beautiful colours? Or the beauty of the night-sky?

We are inundated with images from day to day, some worth looking at and enjoying; some are just distracting, and others are unnecessary or harmful. There’s so much media around us, and it can be fun to enjoy, but we can also get overwhelmed by it, by the buzz of our smartphone interrupting our work, the e-mails to answer, the sheer volume of movies on YouTube… The playlist of distractions will never end unless we hit pause.

In Psalm 27, one of my favourite psalms, which I’m trying (a little slowly and unsuccessfully) to memorise lately, the Psalmist says:
One thing I ask from the Lord,
this only do I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze on the beauty of the Lord
and to seek him in his temple.

I love this. David says one thing I seek. He needs only one thing. When I approach God in prayer, there is often a lot more on my list, and not that there is necessarily anything wrong with that. But in the end I feel like David, that I only really need one thing. There’s this amazing African American spiritual, born out of slavery that says the same thing: You can have this whole world, but give me Jesus.

Why? Because there is a tremendous amount of joy that comes from being with the Lord, from knowing Him, from being filled with Him. David also expresses this in the words gaze on the beauty of the Lord. It’s like he could spend days, just sitting in the temple, drinking it all in, doing nothing else! God is so beautiful. That’s why.

This seems like a rather passive Christian life, right? Sitting and gazing. And truth be told, we can’t do that our whole life. It’s impractical. We have work to do and people to reach for Jesus. But I do believe this is foundational. We need that time to just gaze on the beauty of the Lord and enjoy Him. Plus, we can’t earn God’s grace, and that gift is a gift meant to be enjoyed!

Gazing is actually very important. You are what you spend most time thinking about. You become what you look at. A child learns much more from looking at what their parents do then from doing what their parents say. You can pick up strange habits and jokes from friends. Who you hang out with and who you look at has a major impact on your life.

In 2 Corinthians 3:18 it states: And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

Let’s gaze on God then, and drink in His glory.

How? Some suggestions:
1. Turn your smartphone off at night, hide it away somewhere, and wake up using an alarm clock. Then pray before turning it on.
2. Think about the many different names of God and His attributes. Think about how awesome He is!
3. Watch this YouTube movie: That’s My King, by Dr. S. M. Lockridge
4. Read the Bible and think about how it shows the beauty of the Lord.