If you haven’t already gotten to know her, can I recommend learning about Lilias Trotter? Lilias was a cross-cultural worker to Algeria for forty years, from 1888–1928. She was a pioneer of modern global work, a woman whose legacy and impact for the gospel lives on today. She was a promising artist, at one point tapped to become the greatest of her time, yet God was leading her in a different direction, and she humbly, joyfully laid that path aside.
Throughout her life, Lilias captured the beauty of the world around her through sketches, paintings, and reflections. If you ever get to see her journals or art, you will find, as Russ Ramsey puts it, “the overflow of a heart enamored with the world she inhabited.” Lilias saw the beauty and unfailing love of God in abundance in the world, even the tiniest moments a testament to his presence and work. She made a habit of taking note, of capturing and remembering her “beholdings,” as she called them.
I have always been a look-at-the-moon person, forever interrupting the flow of a conversation to exclaim over spring flowers or a gossamer cobweb covered in morning dew. But, unlike me, Lilias had an intentionality in her beholdings.
For the final years of her life, Lilias was confined to bed in a small room. For those few years, her lifetime practice of beholding continued to sustain her. “Word pictures” brought back from friends and family as well as the view from her window filled her with deep joy and wonder. Flannery O’Conner described it as a “habit of being.” Lilias’s habit of being and beholding formed roots that ran deep, nourishing her faith, growing intimacy with God, and sustaining her in hard times.
Recently, I haven’t been good at beholding, nor simply being. My vision is blurred with worries and cares, the next task to complete, the next email to send, the dishes to be done, the problems to solve. My heart and mind are often filled with restless weariness, and it’s been a while since I’ve noticed the moon. I miss the glory of this world created by our glorious God and the beauty of these people who bear his image.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I know that I connect to God through nature and creativity, yet so often, these are the first things I neglect when things feel busy or difficult. It’s as though, rather than sinking my roots deeper, I draw them up to shallower soil, away from the nutrients, the truths of God, and the intimacy with him that I so desperately need. What does it look like for me to cultivate a habit of being? How do I intentionally look for and take note of beholdings when I barely have time or energy for all the things pressing in on me? Having found this new habit of intentionality I want to develop, I immediately began spiraling over the what and how and when.
Thankfully, it’s not actually dependent on me. Lilias’s secret, I think, was her relationship with God. She didn’t wonder where her beholdings would come from or how she might find them. She knew that this world is overflowing with them because it is made by our infinite God. She could never come to the end, nor find an absence of, his presence. She needed only to look and trust that he would give her the eyes to see and the heart to understand.
I was driving home not long ago and had to pull over, in awe of the beauty before me. It was golden hour and rays of light shone radiant from the mountains, bursting through the gaps between them and creating halos of sunlit clouds on their tops. The light fell like ribbons on the harvest-white cane fields, creating undulating rivers of gold in the breeze. A glance around showed other cars pulled over and people pausing their evening exercise to stop and stare. We all were captivated, drinking in the view before us—one we’d seen a thousand times but never fully seen. I praised God for his irresistible beauty, for his gentle breaking into our small and busy lives to stir our souls. I sunk my roots in and drank deeply, and following Lilias’s example, delighted in this gift of beholding from my Heavenly Father.
There are many ways that we connect with God, from time in nature to studying his Word, time in prayer to acts of service. What does it look like for you to take note of beholdings as you spend time with him?
