Something Greater
- Shelby Leigh Kizer
- Sep 30
- 1 min read
This week I created two larger canvas paintings, both drawn from little watercolor sketches I had made earlier. The sketches were simple and incomplete, but they carried hints of what the paintings could become. On their own they were beautiful in a small way, yet they pointed forward to something fuller, richer, and more complete.
As I painted, I was reminded of these words from C. S. Lewis:
"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... 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."
Just like my sketches pointed to something greater in the final paintings, the beauty we experience in this world is only a glimpse of the true Beauty found in Jesus Himself. The things of this life—art, music, nature, even memory—are good and meaningful, but they are not the source. They are reflections, invitations, and reminders that stir in us a longing for Him.
As Paul writes, “These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.” (Colossians 2:17).
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