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I was just observing my cup of tea–which is a wonderful thing in any case–more wonderful by the lighting that enables me to see the steam swirling about, wispy as a ghost. Isn’t steam a lovely thing, playmate of the air? And it makes me reflect on God the artist, who fills this world with ordinary things strangely beautiful.
An atheist could appreciate the beauty, but only so deep, for the beauty of coiling steam above his cup would only be an accidental side-effect of the laws of nature. And surely it is a side-effect of those laws.
But I can’t help thinking that God might have designed a more pragmatic universe, a world where function did not bring about such superfluously lovely forms, or a world without beings who had a sense of aesthetics, beings who saw strange beauty in ordinary things.
Here, then, a mug of tea testifies to an extravagantly generous and artistic God.
But it is my seminary mug.