yellow

the other day my mom got this little flower from walmart. it is my absolute favorite type-ranunculus (i'm not exactly sure how to pronounce that, but believe me it is gorgeous).

this picture makes me unbelievably happy

isn't it beautiful?

I realized something...

As I was revamping the look of my blog (like it?) I reread my post on beauty and realized I have an answer to my question (i kinda already knew the answer when I wrote it the first time..but now it's more fully developed :). I realized my question was a matter of aesthetics (spelled correctly on first try-what now?), which asks the question "Does beauty inhere in the art itself, or is beauty supplied by the eye of the beholder?" (Philosophy and Education, Knight) The answer (from a biblical Christian worldview) is this: Beauty is in the eye of THE beholder. In other words, God. He is the standard for beauty. He is beauty and he created everything beautiful. Yes, we have our preferences; but ultimately it is God who is the standard.
And you know what else is super cool? We are created in the image of God. "God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them...God saw all that he had made, and it was very good..." (Gen. 27&31a NIV) We reflect God (although our reflection is like the foggiest mirror or the murkiest pond, the most distant shadow and faintest remembrance), we create and imagine, love and hope, and are attracted to beauty and we are beautiful because HE IS.
"One thing I ask of the LORD,
this is what I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the
LORD
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD 
and to seek him in his temple."
(Psalm 27:4 NIV, emphasis mine)

What is Beauty?

Is it a summer sunrise over the ocean? or a soft winter snowfall? or a bride on her wedding day? is it little children blissfully running barefoot through a sprinkler? or morning dew on the grass? Is it a person or an object, a time or a place? What IS beauty? All these things are BEAUTIFUL, but they themselves aren't BEAUTY. Calling things such as sunsets and snowflakes beautiful must mean that there is a higher standard of beauty-but what is it? What is the standard? What is Beauty?