Sight, Sound and the Way God Meets Us

Don: We’ve been looking at grace, and one of the things that has struck us is that grace is often a highly sensory experience. If you look at the biblical experiences that involve grace, you almost always see a distinctive sensory element. David has taken us through that in terms of vibration and sound, and Donald is going to take us through it a bit from the visual side.

Donald: I’d like to begin by drawing some parallels between the reflections on music that David has shared with us over the past few weeks and the way we understand sight. During these weeks, we’ve spent time listening and discussing—not just to songs, but to music itself, and what music does to us inwardly. We talked about rhythm and harmony, about breathing together and singing together. We noticed how music can shape prayer and worship, and how it connects us to one another.

Today I’d like to continue that conversation by placing sound alongside another way we experience the world—and God—which is sight. 

Let’s start with something simple. Sound is vibration that our ears detect, and those vibrations can become music. Sight is light that our eyes collect, and that light can become visual beauty. Both sound and sight begin as things we cannot really see or touch. We can’t see vibration, and we can’t grasp light with our hands. But the moment our bodies receive them—through our ears and our eyes—something happens. Sound and sight turn into meaning.

Another way of saying this is that music is vibration shaped into sound, and sight is light shaped into image. Music and visual beauty don’t exist on their own; they need us. They need our attention. They need us to receive them. And when we do, they become more than noise or brightness. They become something that can move us.

Visual beauty can invite us into God’s presence in a way that is different from music, but just as real. Music moves through time. Songs have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Hymns and praise songs carry us forward, line by line, moment by moment. Music often pulls us along. It can stir emotions and memories—excitement, sadness, or joy.

Visual beauty, I think, works differently. Visual beauty holds still. It stops us. Think about standing in front of a sunset, or looking at a painting, or noticing sunlight coming through trees. These things don’t move toward us; they wait. They invite us to slow down, to stay, to look. Music often wakes up hope and praise. Visual beauty often wakes up reverence and recognition.

Sound can feel like God coming toward us, calling us forward. Sight can feel like God is already there—quiet, steady, and present.

The Bible gives us examples of both. Elijah encounters God through sound—not through loud noise, but through a gentle voice. God is not in the earthquake or the fire, but in a quiet sound that makes Elijah stop and listen. Moses, on the other hand, encounters God through sight. He sees a bush that is burning but not consumed. That sight holds his attention long enough for God to speak. Moses doesn’t rush past it; he stops and looks, and holiness is revealed.

One kind of encounter stirs the heart; the other steadies it.

Visual beauty can become a kind of prayer when it slows us down, quiets our thinking, and moves us from asking “What does this mean?” to simply saying, “I’m here.” If music can lift us toward God, visual beauty can help us stay with God.

Now let’s think about beauty as something experienced alone or together. David reminded us of how important it is to sing together. When we sing together, we breathe together, listen to one another, and become part of something larger than ourselves. But what about seeing together?

When we notice beauty alone, it can feel like a quiet, personal moment with God. When we notice beauty together, something changes. The moment grows larger. It feels shared. It feels like it matters beyond just us.

Shared beauty does a few important things. First, it helps us pay attention longer. If someone else is still looking, we tend to keep looking too. We notice more. Wonder grows when it’s shared. Second, it creates a kind of quiet togetherness. Think of people watching fireworks, standing silently at a memorial, or looking at a painting in a museum. No one has to explain anything. No one has to agree. Yet everyone is sharing the same moment. That kind of silence can feel like worship. Third, beauty becomes a gift. It doesn’t feel owned by anyone; it feels given to everyone.

This is very much like grace. Grace is not something we earn; it’s something we receive. It’s not something we control; it’s something we’re given—often together.

Music brings people together through shared sound. Visual beauty brings people together through shared stillness. Both lift us, just in different ways.

Both sound and sight also show how meaning builds slowly. In music, a single sound may not mean much on its own, but when sounds are joined together, they become melody. When melodies are joined through harmony and instrumentation, music becomes rich and full. Meaning grows through relationship.

I would argue sight works the same way. A few dots become a line. A line becomes a sketch. A sketch becomes a painting. And a painting can begin to feel real—known, even. We might say it this way: dots whisper, lines listen, sketches imagine, and color brings life. The image becomes known over time.

As we think about how meaning builds, we have to ask an important question: do we all have to agree about beauty for it to be real? Do we all have to like the same music? Do we all have to agree on what good art looks like?

When we were children, we asked simple questions like, “What’s your favorite color?” If someone said blue and we liked red, we didn’t argue. We just learned something about that person. But as adults, we often forget how to do that. We say things like, “That’s not real music,” or “That’s not art,” or “That doesn’t belong in church.” Statements like that say more about us than about the thing we’re judging. They shut down conversation instead of inviting it.

What if, instead of asking “Is it good?” we asked, “Why does this matter to you?” Music doesn’t require everyone to agree. It requires attention, humility, and openness. And when we listen and look with curiosity rather than certainty, differences don’t divide us—they teach us.

So what does all this tell us about grace, spirituality, and God? Grace, like beauty, is given. Spirituality, like seeing, begins with noticing. God, like light, is often present before we recognize Him.

Beauty helps us understand that God doesn’t speak only through words. God speaks through experience—through moments that stop us, through things that don’t argue or explain, but invite. Beauty doesn’t prove God’s existence; it helps us notice that God is near. And when beauty is shared, it reminds us that grace is not just personal. It’s something we receive together.

With that in mind, you may recall that some years ago I shared thoughts with you about how we approach seeing—about composition, about semiotics, about ways of attending visually. But what I want to emphasize this morning is something simpler. I’ve always felt that photography as a tool—and I would argue the same for painting or drawing—is about studying what you see. You don’t just glance and move on. You look. You observe from different angles.

That matters because life moves so quickly. If we’re really going to notice God’s presence, we have to stop, look, and pay attention. In that sense, visual experience differs from music. Music grows out of time, whereas visual experience often creates a moment in time.

Those are some of the things I wanted to share this morning.

David: Of course, not all visual beauty is still. It can be found in moving images as well. But your point about still images inducing a quiet reverence in the soul resonates with me. I’ve experienced that. At the same time, it’s still possible to turn a still image—a photograph or a painting—into a kind of journey.

I know this because I used to glance at paintings quickly. I could look at the Mona Lisa for a few seconds and think, “That’s very nice,” and then move on. But there was a columnist in the New York Times who introduced a weekly exercise: each week, a single painting, and the challenge was to look at it for twenty minutes. Just sit with it and see what emerged.

It was a fascinating exercise. I learned so much. It’s exactly what you were saying: the artist studies the subject closely over a long period in order to understand it and put it on canvas. And for the viewer to receive what the artist has given, the viewer also has to invest time—studying not just the whole, but every part.

It takes me back to what I said earlier about music—about being outside a chord versus being inside it. From the outside, we hear a chord and say, “That’s nice.” But inside the chord, where the individual notes are resonating together, the experience is much richer.

Donald: Don’t think primarily in terms of mastering tools. Tools only provide a method for approaching the subject. Whether we’re talking about photography, painting, or drawing—and I agree, it doesn’t have to be a still moment—that’s what I’m focusing on here.

At a dinner party, someone once asked an artist who regularly shows in galleries, “How long does it take to do a 12-by-12?” That’s an interesting question. What’s driving it? I remember responding that if a photograph takes one five-hundredth of a second to capture, then maybe you could move on quickly. But that misses the point. The tools are something you interact with; they don’t control the moment.

Ideally, we would notice life with the same care we bring to art-making. But it seems that when we’re away from home, or when we’re using tools to look carefully at something, we’re more likely to slow down. That’s quite different from how we behave with music.

David: I’m reminded of a story about Picasso late in his life. He was sitting in a café when someone recognized him and asked, “Mr. Picasso, would you sketch these flowers on the table on the back of a napkin?” He did so in a few seconds and handed it to her. “That’ll be $100,000,” he said. She protested, “But it only took you a few seconds.” And he replied, “No, ma’am—it took me sixty years.”

Carolyn: Does having studied music or art—or having some background in those fields—make a difference in how we experience beauty? You can have joyful music simply by having Grandpa come into the room, sit at the piano, and say, “Let’s sing.” There’s nothing more beautiful than a family singing together—little people, older people, everyone. Or when a child brings a simple drawing they’ve made to please Grandpa, that beauty comes from love, not from technique.

Music is part of that basic love for what you’re doing. And when you get into different genres of art, it’s still about loving what you do. But sometimes, in order to converse and understand, we go beyond the immediate beauty. I’m wondering how much background is really required to appreciate beauty in both music and art.

Don: I’d say some people have a natural ability to appreciate music, art, and other sensory experiences. But what impresses me, as we’ve studied grace, is how consistently grace in Scripture appears as an overwhelming sensory experience.

Think about Abraham and the binding of Isaac—that was an intensely sensory moment. Jonah in the belly of the fish may be the most intense sensory experience imaginable. Saul’s experience on the road to Damascus is sensory. Balaam’s encounter with a donkey that refuses to move is sensory. Again and again, Scripture gives the impression that God interacts with us through our senses to communicate grace.

So perhaps we need to reconsider how God uses sensory experience to make grace known.

Sharon: Are we doing taste next? 🙂 

Don: Well, Scripture does say, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” 🙂 

Sharon: What struck me was what Donald said about the social dynamic of a paused moment. Right now, I’m looking at an absolutely gorgeous sunset here in Malawi. But I’m widowed, and I’m alone. I don’t have someone to share that with.

I’ve had that relationship in the past—being able to grab someone’s hand and squeeze it during a beautiful moment. That was wonderful, and I no longer have that. So what I’ve found in widowhood is that I often turn those moments into prayer: “Thank you, Lord, for this breathtaking moment.”

I do think there’s a social dimension to pausing and seeing something beautiful, or experiencing anything beautiful through the senses. It’s wonderful to share that with another person. But the beauty is that my relationship with Jesus is always there. I share beauty with Him all day long—whether it’s a stunning sunset or even discovering that the electricity is still on.

There are these little moments that cause me to pause and say, “Wow, Jesus—you are an amazing artist.” There’s a bird that pecks on my window, red-eyed and exotic, and those moments are priceless. Donald, I think you’re reminding us not to take for granted the things that speak to us of grace and of our walk with Jesus.

Donald: Sharon’s comment and Carolyn’s question fit together for me. I’m thinking about this past year, which was tumultuous, but Becky and I spent some very rich moments together in Florida after we retired.

I joke that if Florida adds one more car, the state will be in total gridlock. Everyone is rushing toward the shore, looking for beauty. And yet, every night, when there’s a sunset like the one you described, everything stops. People line up as close to the water as they can, and it gets quiet for a few moments.

Why is that? Why do people who seem constantly in a hurry suddenly stop? I’ve just been to Yosemite, and I’m thinking about why people rush toward these moments of beauty when we often describe modern people as loving entertainment but lacking appreciation for natural beauty.

David: But if we say that people experience God through beauty—through a sunset, through a painting, through Beethoven—aren’t we then denying access to God for people who have no access to beautiful things?

What about people living in a dingy New York apartment, with no piano, no beautiful music, just blaring television ads or loud neighbors? No beautiful sights, terrible smells, a deprived sensory world. Surely we’re not saying they’re denied access to God.

Kiran: I’d argue that for people like that, even a small glimpse of beauty evokes stronger emotion. When beauty is abundant, our appreciation dulls. But when beauty is rare, even a little bit can be profoundly elevating.

David: But what if they never get that glimpse?

Kiran: I don’t think that’s possible. You see beauty in a child, in a puppy, in a flower, in raindrops, in birdsong. You can’t avoid it.

Donald: Quite often, when you get to church and look at the pew in front of you, there may be two or three little ones sitting there. What do the parents do? They pull out sheets of paper and some crayons, and those kids go at it with enthusiasm. They’re seeing something different than you and I see—there’s no question about that.

We see value because they created it. They see value because they are creating. Even a simple drawing matters. Give a child a crayon and a blank sheet of paper and something happens.

But I think you could tip the scale the other way as well. If you lived in Orlando, you might be so overwhelmed by visual stimuli that you never slow down enough to notice it. It just keeps coming at you. I’m not sure that’s any less of a challenge than being surrounded by the constraints of a city.

Carolyn: I had one experience where beauty felt almost overwhelming, and that was singing surrounded by the massive pipes of a pipe organ, played by an exceptional organist. I didn’t know how to take in so much at once. I think that’s what you’re describing—whether it’s Orlando’s visual overload or standing inside that sound.

Or think of walking through the Dalí Museum. If you know nothing about art and just walk through it, it can be disorienting. But if something in your background—some desire the Lord has given you—connects, it’s like Moses seeing the burning bush. Suddenly you’re surrounded by these pipes, or these enormous paintings, and they demand your attention.

Some people walk straight through and say, “Oh,” and move on. Others stop and look and look and learn. And I can see what Kiran said—you can find beauty in a child in New York City, in a flower in New York City. You can also hear it in the drums next door, or a roaring trumpet. I love it all.

This is bigger than I can put into words. Where do we say, “Be still and know that I am God,” and simply live in the beauty of Jesus Christ and the grace He has given us? There is so much here, and I don’t even have the vocabulary to express it.

Kiran: I’m also thinking about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. When someone is at the bottom of that pyramid, there’s no time for beauty—they’re just surviving. When you look at great visual art, especially in the West, it often reflects societies where people had security, food, and stability.

India has extraordinary sculpture. China has remarkable pottery. But when you look at the sculptures of someone like Leonardo da Vinci—those figures draped with stone that looks like cloth—it’s phenomenal. To reach that level, a person needs more than inspiration; they need safety and stability.

So how does that fit with grace? Grace arrives before anything else. Is art an expression of growth in someone immersed in grace? Is it the outworking of a transformed heart? Because creating art like that is incredibly hard. Most artists are poor. They could easily give up, but they don’t. What sustains them? Is it grace working in them?

Donald: That opens another dimension—the difference between discovered art and created art. Today I’ve mostly talked about discovered art. But as you were speaking, I was thinking about environments like cathedrals, where every sense is engaged.

You have sculpture, stained glass, sound, smell, sometimes even water. A church environment seems designed to make us notice—to engage us one way or another. If it doesn’t get us this way, it will get us that way.

David: And it’s trying to get you to notice the Spirit—to notice God. But others take the opposite position. Quakers gather in plain rooms, with no music, no images, no sermons. Don’t they have a point? After all, God isn’t a physical being. Music is molecular movement. Images are photons. These are physical phenomena.

Donald: That’s why I raised the question earlier about favorite colors. We can take all of this apart and say, “You don’t really need any of the senses to find God.” How we discover God through our senses varies enormously from person to person. Some people are drawn to stillness; some are drawn to movement. Some want sound; some want silence. It’s deeply personal. The same is true of art and music.

As a group, we may be able to agree—or disagree—about what has quality or value, but the moment you introduce another set of criteria, you end up with a completely different set of opinions.

David: My question, fundamentally, is this: Is a God we reach through the senses a valid and reliable God? Is it the real God?

Carolyn: This goes back to what I was asking earlier. Do we need a background, some kind of schooling—formal or informal—to be tuned in? Maybe taught by parents, teachers, or experience. Spiritually, too, if we’re in tune with the Holy Spirit, there’s a kind of education that draws us toward things we partly understand and want to understand more.

That can be grace. It can be art. It can be music. It’s hard to describe. I want to say “sensual,” but not in a crude sense—something you can’t touch, but can feel, see, and sometimes hear. It’s something the Lord has given us.

Don: If we don’t encounter God through the senses, how do we encounter Him? What is the vehicle? What is the sixth sense, so to speak? Because the biblical stories certainly present grace as sensory, as we’ve already mentioned. So I’m wondering how we would encounter God if not through the senses?

David: I believe in the Holy Spirit that is resident in all of us. I believe we’re born with it. It’s there to be awakened. I’m attracted to the idea that the senses can help awaken it, but I’m not convinced they’re necessary.

Messiaen, for example, was imprisoned in a prisoner-of-war camp under horrific conditions, and yet he found the spirit within himself to produce extraordinary music. I have to believe that grace came to him anyway. It was there all along. If he hadn’t had access to a piano or fellow musicians, we might never have heard of him—but God would still have existed for him and in him.

Donald: Think of a magnet. We know a magnet has a field, and when something enters that field, it reacts. If you’re far away, you may not feel the pull. As you get closer, you do. Does that mean the magnet isn’t real if you don’t feel it yet?

I’m trying to agree with Don in part. What makes us human—our senses, our capacity to think? What is unique about human beings? I don’t think anything else that breathes appreciates art in the way humans do.

David: I think what makes us unique is that we are both physical and spiritual because of the presence of the Holy Spirit. Angels, if they exist, are spiritual but not physical. We’re both. Whether that uniqueness matters, I’m not sure. It’s the spirituality that matters.

Many biblical stories may not be intended as literal sensory accounts but as metaphors for spiritual realities. Jonah in the belly of the fish isn’t about imagining slime and darkness. It’s pointing beyond the sensory to something deeper.

I don’t have an answer. We’re drawn to feelings of God’s presence in cathedrals, with statues and music. But there are people who never have access to any of that. I cannot believe God has abandoned them or is somehow more distant from them. I believe the Holy Spirit within them can sustain them just as fully as beautiful things.

Reinhard: I think God made us complete. We were created whole as human beings. We appreciate what surrounds us—natural beauty and human-made beauty, including visual art. I believe all of this is a gift from God. We use our sight to appreciate beauty. The saying that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” may be true in many cases, but natural beauty, I think, is something almost everyone can appreciate.

The same is true of human-made beauty, including music. There is no “natural” music in the sense of a score that simply exists; scores are made by people. But the capacity to create and appreciate a score is still a gift from God. Music requires harmony to become beautiful. And when we talk about grace and the Holy Spirit, we also have to be “in tune” in order to receive grace through the Spirit.

When we are in tune, we can recognize the beauty of God’s creativity. Grace, though intangible, is something we can experience through the Holy Spirit working in us. God gave us all of this as a complete package—to live life, to appreciate beauty, to hear music, and at the same time to grow spiritually.

Grace is essential for life now and for what comes after. When we put all of this together, we begin to see how great God is—how marvelous His creation is, and how salvation itself is part of that gift.

David: I’m drawn back to my favorite passage in the Bible—the Beatitudes. God doesn’t say, “Blessed are those who have access to cathedrals and beautiful music.” He says, “Blessed are the poor, the oppressed, those whose senses are bludgeoned rather than delighted.”

Those are the people Jesus calls blessed. So are we making a mistake by looking to sensual beauty and art as indicators of spiritual presence?

Kiran: Isaiah describes Lucifer as radiant, beautiful, full of music. But when Isaiah describes Jesus, he says there was “no beauty that we should desire Him.” He almost calls Him unattractive. And yet salvation comes through Jesus.

So beauty, like music, can elevate us toward good or toward something destructive. Maybe it’s just an instrument. The question is how it’s used.

David: That’s exactly my concern. Beauty of the senses is nice to have. If you’re fortunate enough to have access to it, that’s wonderful. But spiritually, I’m not convinced it’s essential. It’s relevant to human enjoyment of life, but I’m not sure it has deep relevance to our spiritual life.

Donald: I’m not sure I agree. If you were to look out the window behind you for a moment—whatever might be there—you might notice something: birds, squirrels, snow falling. I don’t even know what’s there, but something might catch your attention.

That’s why I started with beauty rather than art. We’ve been gifted with natural beauty, and I’m grateful that even in our hurried society, people still recognize its value to the human spirit. Some may see God in it; others may not. But if we allow ourselves to look carefully and study what’s there, we might discover God in a way we wouldn’t have otherwise.

Don: That raises a question for me. Is there something that is uniformly beautiful—something everyone would recognize as beautiful? Is a sunset over Auschwitz the same as a sunset over Fort Myers, Florida?

Donald: I think it probably is, in the sense that it’s beyond us. We have no control over it. It happens reliably. That reliability itself is reassuring.

David: But that brings us back to Carolyn’s concern. There were people in Auschwitz who never saw the sunset. They were kept indoors, held in dismal conditions, deprived of beauty. We have to remember the oppressed, the poor, those who never have access to art or beauty. And we cannot say that they were denied access to God. That cannot be true. Jesus explicitly denies that in the Beatitudes.

Those are the very people who are blessed. Spiritually speaking, if there is one thing I would call truly beautiful, it is the teaching of Jesus. To me, His teaching is flawless. “Turn the other cheek” is an almost unbearably beautiful thing to say.

Donald: But many people don’t have access to the story of Christ.

David: I believe they do, through the Holy Spirit. They may not have access to the words, but I believe everyone has access to the spirit of what Jesus was saying.

Carolyn: Before Pentecost, was the Holy Spirit present in the same way?

David: I believe that from the beginning of humanity, the Holy Spirit has always been present and unchanged.

Carolyn: When Christ left, He told His disciples that He was going to give them something. I think we’re largely saying the same thing. I do believe that the Trinity was present from the beginning. And I resonate with what Donald said earlier. I’m looking out the window now, seeing birds and trees, and I recognize the beauty in that. But I also remember the story of the man in the hospital who wanted the bed by the window.

His friend would describe all the beauty outside. When that friend died, the man was moved to the window bed and discovered there was only a wall. The beauty had been formed within him. And I think that inner beauty—the presence of the Holy Spirit—is what the Lord gives us.

What troubles me is that we’ve taken art and music and turned them into standards by which we judge what is good and what is bad, or what is good for you versus what is good for me. I see this in our churches, especially among our youth. They want answers, and I don’t have all of them.

Reinhard: I’d like to come back to the question of the Holy Spirit and Pentecost. The Spirit was promised by Jesus before His departure. In the Old Testament, we see God working through prophets and angels. When Jesus came, He showed us how to live as God’s people. And the Holy Spirit continues to teach us how to live as Jesus lived.

That’s our calling—to live that way, with the help of the Spirit.

Regarding beauty, Jesus refers to it only briefly, such as in Matthew 6, where He speaks about the lilies of the field. Even Solomon, with all his glory, could not surpass their beauty. But the point isn’t the flowers themselves—it’s that human beings are far more valuable than anything else God created. We are His workmanship.

So beauty is a gift to appreciate, but human life and our relationship with God are more important. Many people in the world lack the privileges we enjoy in the West. For them, survival itself is a daily struggle. In God’s eyes, human life is what matters most.

One day we will all face judgment. And what will matter then is our relationship with God. Beauty, music, and privilege fade in comparison to that.

When we are in tune with the Holy Spirit, we live rightly. Just as in music, each of us must play the right part to create harmony. When we are in tune as individuals and as a community, we live in harmony with God and with one another.

Alice: An Arabic poet once said, “He who has no beauty in himself does not see anything beautiful in life.” I believe that’s true. This inner beauty is the presence of God within us. It thrills the soul and draws it toward all kinds of beauty—whether that comes through a word, a touch, a look, a voice, or an act of selfless love.

It’s true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. A sunset over Auschwitz is not the same as a sunset over Florida, depending on the one who sees it. God’s grace, when received, opens our souls to see the ultimate beauty embodied in Jesus on the cross. And if that beauty cannot be seen, then no other beauty truly can.

Donald: This has been a stimulating conversation for me. Next week, my plan is to speak primarily about grandeur and simplicity—one that comes at you, and one that is discovered, perhaps even one that comes from within. I’m not sure yet; I need to think about it more.

Don initially asked me to share some thoughts on the relationship between the visual arts and grace, and I ended up broadening that a bit. But I think that may have been necessary, because what Carolyn raised—and what we’ve seen with music as well—is the question of why we’re asked to take art appreciation or music appreciation in the first place. Someone thought we needed to learn how to notice.

Another idea I wish we had more time to explore is that words matter—spoken words and written words. Whether I pick up this book or that one, what it says to me depends on who I am and what I bring to it. Meaning arises from alignment—between the words and the one receiving them.

For me to tell you what beauty is, or where you must go to find it—to tell you that you need to look out my window or go to a particular cathedral—is arrogant. I think it’s part of human nature to discover beauty for ourselves. Sometimes that discovery begins with imagination.

I don’t know whether a child looks at something and immediately says, “That’s beautiful,” but I do think the child is held by what they’re seeing. Imagination engages them. And perhaps that’s where beauty begins.

Those are some of my takeaways from today’s discussion. Thank you very much.

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