For God, simple existence is a breathtaking experience. He has all the power in the universe, and all the freedom to do with it as He pleases, all the wisdom to plan His actions so that He can never fail or do something foolish, He can never do anything wrong but only what is astoundingly beautiful. We saw something of the sheer pleasure of God’s existence when we thought about the complete delights between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God needs nothing outside of Himself to be completely satisfied forever.

Has it not been a re-awakening for you to realize that God has made you, as a human being, more like Him than He has made any other creature in the universe? Do you realize that you have the capacities to experience the thrill of simple daily existence as you experience the facets of the image of God in you? You can love, you can experience joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. You can know what it is to cultivate capacities that God has shared with you, excellent capacities that He exercises and experiences as God Almighty (His communicable attributes).

And here comes the point I have been building up to for over a month: The thing that makes such a God beautiful is the intention in His heart. This may not strike you as outstanding in this moment, but I would like to continue to show you how this intention in the heart of God really is the final stopping point in your consideration of beauty.

I used to accompany my father to an outreach venture once per year to a very remote part of the country where we know a small pocket of believers. One picture fixed in my mind from those trips was the existence of one of the dogs that lived there. He lived on a 2-metre length of chain on a clean patch of sand, straining toward every person who walked by. Every evening he would get a lump of mealie meal. His life was radically restricted. His owner intended for that dog to live there near the gateway in order to have early warning that someone was entering the property. In the owner’s mind, that was the entire realm of the dog’s usefulness, a two-metre radius territory in which he must simply alert his owner of what he sees. In spite of these restrictions, that dog was always so enthusiastic.

When God created man in His image, God made a being whose “chain” is much longer. God has given humans privilege immeasurably beyond any other creature because He intends for humans to function in a way that is vastly richer than the way in which any other creature functions. God has given you all of the capacities we have been speaking about because He intended for you to have those capacities with which to drink in the thrill of existence.