In Psalm 27:4, David desires to ‘behold the beauty of the Lord’.
I believe that this subject is something that Christians have neglected in our present age. Our (right) desire for ‘truth’, and our caution about ‘feelings’ and ‘excesses’ in our churches can sometimes skew our Christian lives away from the joy that comes to those who truly know the beauty of God.
Our forefathers were able to articulate their understanding of the subject. In the 4th century, Augustine wrote the words that form the first two verses of a seldom sung hymn:
O matchless beauty of our
God
so ancient and so new,
kindle in us your fire of
love;
fall on us as the dew!
How late we came to love
you, Lord;
how strong the hold of sin!
Your beauty speaks from all
that is:
your likeness pleads within.
The ‘fire of love’ that Augustine writes about is something we need in these days. It is the same fire that we see in David in Psalm 27: ‘One thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.’
