Art and Eternal Glories

"Learn to look; compare what is before you with your familiar or secret ideas....Let a gallery or a museum show you something more than a collection of objects, let it show you schools of art and of life, conceptions of destiny and of nature, successive or varied tendencies of technique, of inspiration, of feeling...."
"If you cannot think thus, you will become or be, a man of only commonplace mind. A thinker is like a filter, in which truths as they pass through leave their best substance behind."
from the book, The Intellectual Life

Although I have had a membership to our local art museum for several years, it is only recently that I have gone beyond

looking

in a superficial way. This year, two of my daughters are taking art lessons at the museum. While they are engaged with lessons, I have the luxury of perusing the gallery for one and a half hours each week.
To view great works of art on a regular basis means that you become more intimately acquainted with them. Every week I see details that I did not notice on previous visits. I am, I think, beginning to absorb a little more understanding of technique and schools of thought.
Often, I have the added pleasure of bringing a lady friend with me as a guest on these museum visits. This adds another layer of pleasure: listening to the perceptions and observations of others. This always brings a fresh perspective to me.

Here is a picture of one of the flashier items in the museum's permanent collection, a Chihuly glass sculpture. As I view the sunlight playing on the colored glass, it makes me think of heavenly glories: "Her light was like a most precious stone, like jasper stone, clear as crystal." Revelation 21:11 "And the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass." Revelation 21:21
The beauty we now enjoy is but a shadow of the better things to come. How wonderful that God gives us the ability to train the inner eye to see beyond the natural, to see glimpses of eternal delights.
Credit for the picture goes to my friend,smilingrrt, who is much better with a camera than I am!