3. Get Outside

Welcome back, friends. Good to be together here in session three. Before we start, if you haven’t yet, put your phone on airplane mode. Don’t just silence it—you’ll still feel it vibrate. Airplane mode, everyone. Technology aside.

And then let’s begin again with the one-minute pause. Now, I want to remind you what we’re doing with the pause is just creating some soul space. Okay, just some soul space. We’ll show you something beautiful, and it’s not time for fervent prayer and it’s not time for making amends of all your failures. This is just the opportunity to breathe and really do nothing for 60 seconds.

As you practice that, you actually get better at it. It’s like learning to ride a bike, drive a car, or play an instrument. You know, the more comfortable you are, the more it does for you and the more joy that you get out of it. And I hope that you’re learning to get that into your day a couple of times a day.

Okay, now here’s what I want to do. I want to show you where we’re filming. It’s such a clean and sterile environment: very white, very modern, very sleek, filled with technology. It looks like we’re filming an Apple commercial. And now I want to take you outside.

And this is the world that God made, a living world filled with the presence of the living God. Human beings need oxygen in order to live, lots of it. And so our loving Father gave us a world that’s literally saturated in oxygen. We swim in oxygen every day like fish swim in water. Speaking of water, human beings need water to live, too. We can’t go more than four days without it. And so our loving Father provided us with a world that is absolutely saturated in water—in the rivers, the lakes, the streams, the oceans, and the rain cycle that brings it to the earth. Now, our loving Father also saturated this world with another grace that apparently He assumed we need every day, and that gift and that grace is beauty.

The world is filled with the beauty of God. This world is actually more beautiful than it is functional. God thinks that we need beauty for the restoration and nourishment of our souls. Did you know that a short walk in the woods actually reduces the cortisol level, the stress chemicals in your body and brain? Research shows that hospital patients recover faster and need fewer pain meds if their window has a view of nature. Nature heals. Beauty heals. But you don’t need a study to convince you of this. Just contrast these two experiences, and let’s look at another two contrasts.

Beauty is merciful. Beauty heals. Beauty comforts. As a therapist, I’ve had many clients who have been through some of the most traumatic stories you’ve ever heard, and they would report to me that it was actually experiences of beauty that God brought to them that contributed most to their healing journey. Beauty is assuring. Beauty is comforting. Why else do we send flowers to people who are hurting or to hospital rooms? Beauty is a grace that God has given to us for the restoration of our souls.

Last summer, God invited me to take a road trip with Him—a few days up through Wyoming and Montana, hours to simply drink in the beauty of creation and detox from my crazy world. I’d sit in my little camp chair before a mountainside covered with tens of thousands of trees and just marvel and drink in the abundance of God. Beauty assures us that there is good in the world and that evil does not win. Beauty assures us of the generosity of God. He saturated the world with it, and we need it desperately.

And now, let’s go back inside. The World Health Organization reported ten years ago—ten years ago—that we now spend 93% of our lives indoors. Ninety-three percent of your entire life is spent in an artificial world. So instead of sunlight and its warmth, and moonlight and its beauty, you live in artificial lighting. Instead of real weather and the wind and the rain, your world is a constant artificial temperature. Everything you touch in your world is fake things like plastic and faux leather and nylon instead of the roughness of tree bark and the wetness of grass in the morning. Even the sounds in your artificial world are fake sounds. It’s the hum of the HVAC. It’s the click of the keyboard. It’s the whir of technology. All the plants in our little bubble? Most of them are fake. Instead of emitting oxygen, they actually off-gas toxins from the decomposing plastic, okay?

This is not the life that God created for human beings. This is life for people in a science-fiction novel, okay? And this is not good for the soul. I just want to point out that when God created the human race, He did not set them down at the mall. He did not put us in front of a computer screen. He created us to live in a world of beauty and richness and creation, the life-giving nature of creation.

So let’s go back to that beloved Psalm, maybe one of the most precious passages of Scripture of all time, Psalm 23. “The Lord is my shepherd. I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. He refreshes my soul.” David is describing an experience for us. He’s modeling for us something that he learned from God. The Lord is his shepherd. Jesus is guiding him into a soul-restoring experience. I want you to notice where He takes him. He takes him outside. He takes him into beauty. He takes him into creation. There were plenty of indoor places in David’s day. People had houses, and there were markets and shops and that sort of thing, but God took him into the restorative power of nature and of beauty, and He restored his soul.

Friends, it is as simple as this: Technology drains, right? Beauty and nature and goodness and life restore. So we want to reduce one and increase the other. Here’s our exercise right now. Whether you’re alone or you’re doing this in a group, we’re gonna hit pause in just a moment, and everybody’s gonna go outside for five minutes, all right? Somebody set their timer, shepherd that, look at your watch—just five minutes. Whatever the weather is, day or night, I want you to go outside and just find some simple expression of beauty. It might be water on the pavement, it might be the moonlight, it might be the sound of birds singing, or it might be sunlight if it’s daytime. Some simple expression of beauty, and you’re gonna practice the pause there. You’re going to release everything, and then you’re going to welcome this gift of beauty that God is giving. So, let’s take a five-minute pause.

Welcome back. I hope it was refreshing. Hope you didn’t get lost. As you experience more beauty, I think you’re actually going to come to love it and see it in so many places. The good news is we don’t have to go to the Alps. We don’t have to take a trip to Tuscany. God is giving us the grace of beauty every day of our lives in some very simple and very delicate ways. In this way, sunlight comes through the foliage of leaves. In the shimmering shadows sunlight creates through any foliage, in the intricate pattern and color of tree bark, the way sunlight falls on your kitchen table in the morning, the grain of wood, songbirds in your neighborhood, fabric, candlelight, the infinitely creative patterns of frost, water on a blade of grass, water drops on rain-washed streets in the city at night, drops of water on your windshield. Human faces are infinitely beautiful.

And I haven’t even mentioned music and art and flowers in vases and all the things we use to fill our homes with beauty. This is such a simple grace, friends. And so overlooked. I’m surprised that it is not listed in most of the practices of discipleship or spiritual disciplines, but just as God has filled our world with oxygen and filled our world with water so that we might have life, He’s filled our world with beauty because He knows that we need it. And this is especially true in a traumatic age like ours.

And you remember that I warned you that so much of the tsunami of information coming at us is the heartbreak of the world. And there’s actually research now that’s showing that simply to view a traumatic event is to traumatize the viewer. Many of the people who simply watched the unfolding of the events on 9/11 later reported the same signs of PTSD as those who were present.

And so we’re trying to push back that madness and that chaos and allow beauty into our lives. Beauty actually heals the human soul. And what we’re doing over time here is we’re building a set of very simple practices. We’re learning to pause in our day. We’re learning to release things to Jesus. And now we’re learning to receive the different graces that He is bringing to us, like beauty.

And so often, I’ll use the one-minute pause to simply drink in some beauty in my day—the bird at my window or something beautiful on my desk. And just, again, not fervent prayer, not inquiry, but just allowing God to come to us in the space that we are creating for Him.

Okay, so again, in your study guide and in the book, we unpack this a lot more. But what’s your plan for the week? What can you do to get some more beauty in your life? Let me recommend a couple of things. Get outside every day. I’ll get up and just walk outside my office building. I work in an office; I get outside and just walk outside the building a couple of times a day. It takes me three to four minutes to do that, but it is so good and so refreshing.

Begin to fill your home with things of beauty, with art, plants, and music. Make intentional steps to get more beauty into your world. And then here’s the secret, okay, here’s the secret: Everybody sees the beauty. It’s in front of everyone, right? The heavens declare the glory of God, the psalm says, right? The skies are filled with His handiwork, okay? The beauty’s always there.

But what most people do is they look at it and go, “Wow,” and then they just go on with their day. The secret of the healing power of beauty is this: I receive this gift, Father. I receive this. You stop, you pay attention, and you receive it. “Thank you for this gift. I receive this beauty into my soul, and with it, I receive you and your love and your presence in my life.” We pause, and we receive the gift with thanksgiving. And as we allow it in, as we allow it to minister to us, you’re going to find that you’re going to get more and more of your life back.