What made it so? Jeff and I often talk of our longing to experience natural beauty. This appetite for beauty is so deeply embedded in our hearts that when we are deprived of it for a period of time our souls become restless. I will be the first to say Saudi has its charms and beauty, and I look forward to discovering more of these. However, the dispensation of beauty across the globe is not equal. And, part of the charm of desert beauty is that it is long sought after and easily missed.
The Cape Town peninsula was richly adorned in beauty. Some of my notes from the trip follow.
Right now I am sitting on our front porch in Simonstown overlooking False Bay, trying to appreciate in every detail the beauty before me. South Africa is an over-indulgent feast to the eyes. The flora is abundant and richly colorful. I'm not sure I've experienced a place so diversely colorful! There are flowering bushes of every color (oranges, yellows, pinks, reds, blues, purples) and flowers as big as melons and as small as snowflakes. There are flowers shaped as fountains, fireworks, foxtails, paintbrushes, duster brushes, woody tulips, and so many others that there isn't time enough to describe them. I don't know the names so I am reduced to childlike descriptions in order to lock the look of this place into my mind. Even the rocks add color - red, grey, brown. And there is some kind of lichen that reflects brilliant orange. A series of mountain ridges slope down to the shore all along the bay, like giants sleeping, waiting for some approaching great event. This one to my left reminds me of Elephant Butte, but green and with a vast ocean before it. We've seen small glimpses of the fauna: baboon, bontebok, turtle, lizard, ostrich, hummingbird, sun-bird, whale, and of course, penguin.
Yesterday we rose early and drove to the Cape of Storms/Cape of Good Hope. Both names tell so much of the story of the cape. What a rugged and beautiful place! We made our way through the park in an unhurried way marveling at the seemingly endless gorgeous vistas. This one on the Indian side, that one on the Atlantic, this one with a piece of both impressive oceans. We eventually made it to the lighthouse, rode the funicular train up the backside of the peak, and hiked up the final stairs to the precarious top. What an awe-inspiring moment to look over the very tip of Africa to the turbulent sea below. The wind was so powerful I was afraid Ellen would be blown clean off the continent, much as Eustace was blown into Narnia. Over five hundred years ago Vasco da Gama successfully made it around the cape and continued on to India. The road was paved for him by scores of shipwrecks in the stormy two ocean waters. We spent the day driving the park, picnicking along the shores and watching for wildlife.
C.S. Lewis speaks about the compelling nature of beauty. But he warns that our love of beauty (as of all good things) can turn into an idol, if we don't seek the One behind the beauty.
Listen to this quote from The Weight of Glory:
"The books or the music [or the scenic views in Cape Town] 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. These things--the beauty, the memory of our own past--are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. 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 hear, news from a country we have never yet visited."
If the vibrant colors of the fynbos (wild bush), the shapeliness of the cliffs and the loveliness of the Cape Town shores are enough to wow my heart. How much more the God whose mind created them in all their detail and glorious grandeur! And that "something" that stirs in our hearts as we marvel is our very longing for Him.
I wish I could have had long conversations with God on the beach. Instead the reality was often an exclamation of "Wow, this is so beautiful" along cries of "Benjamin's about to fall off that cliff!" So I will just have to be content with being a passing observer of how the heavens and the earth declare the glory of God in South Africa. This was enough. And, it was wonderfully refreshing!
