Beautiful Things

By Tahren Terrell Brandon

February 25, 2021 12:15PM

Tahren Terrell Brandon
Tahren Terrell Brandon
Have you ever wondered what God's voice sounds like? Not His speaking voice, His singing voice. My mother sent me a recording of her rehearsing a song she is singing for Resurrection Sunday. She wanted me to critique her but my only response was “Wow! No one else should ever be allowed to sing that song ever again!” It was unbelievable. If there were something to critique, I missed it from being so consumed by the beauty of the song and her voice. “The Holy City,” is not a song that just anyone can sing. It was likely written with a certain type of voice in mind and my mother has that type of voice, a classic voice, the type you expect to hear when you enter the pearly gates. Here, I was trying to critique her rehearsal and was being drawn to tears. It made me think, if a human being can have such a flawless voice, one that could pierce the hardest heart and warm the coldest soul, what must God's singing voice sound like?

The Katina’s sing a song called “Beautiful Things,” it goes, “You make beautiful things out of the dust. You make beautiful things out of us.” Do we take that for granted? The fact that God is very talented. He makes beautiful things just from His speaking voice. He formed our bodies from dirt, filled them with organs, tissues, cells and gave us the ability to reproduce life. He shares His talents with us, His intelligence, compassion, capacity to reason and endless capabilities including the ability to beautifully sing praises to Him. Marvelous things God has done, who can compare to Him (Ps. 98:1)?

Jeremiah begged the Israelites to separate themselves from the godless nations around them. Maybe it was the appeal of the tangible that drew them to the idols, they could touch them, see them, decorate them in the rarest of hues and the finest of materials. Despite all the ways in which God had shown Himself to them, they chose to worship idols. A wise man once said “Men make idols. Jehovah makes men” (Morgan). In Revelation, the voice of the LORD is described as the sound of many waters and like the voice of loud thunder (Rev. 1:15). This is the voice that spoke and created the very things that man uses to create his own idols. The Israelites magnified inanimate objects that had no power to do good or evil. They practiced pagan customs like the nations around them, assigned power to that which had no power and disregarded the authority of Almighty God (Jer. 10). We tend to make that mistake too, don’t we? We have access to the living God, through His Son Jesus Christ. We have His love, protection, provision, His attributes, His benefits and we choose to magnify that which is not the Almighty God.

Elijah soaked the altar, drenched it with water. How was God going to burn the sacrifice on a wet altar? Baal couldn’t do it on a dry altar with hundreds of pagan priests dancing and chanting and calling on him, but Yahweh could set fire to a wet altar? Indeed, He could and He did, sending fire from heaven! There was never any chance of Baal sending fire, he had as much power as the rock he was fashioned from (1 Kings 18:22-40). We have a way of giving power to things that have none, energizing that which has no life. We give credit to one another and praise to idols that we have crafted ourselves. Like Israel, we get so caught up in the culture and creating false idols, that we have no desire to even hear God's voice. We ought to challenge ourselves to let go of this world and our idols and get to know the God who has given us everything.

Elijah told the people that if God is the one true God, they should follow Him but if Baal is the one and only god, they should follow him. We should take his advice and make a choice, although, we don’t have to glorify God for Him to be glorious Creator of all. We don’t have to magnify the LORD for Him to be lifted up. We don’t have to appreciate Gods attributes, or the attributes He has given to us, for Him to be the source of all things good. We don’t have to seek His face, submit to His will or praise Him. We don’t have to wonder what it sounds like when He sings. Regardless of what we do, the LORD is still the LORD, God is still great, Yahweh is still the Creator of all things and He is still responsible for all of the world’s beautiful things.

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