“When Jesus was asked about beauty, he pointed to nature, to the lilies of the field. Behold them, he said, and behold is a special word: it means to look upon something amazing or unexpected. Behold! It is an exhortation, not a whiny demand, like when you’re talking to your child— “Behold me when I’m talking to you, sinner!” Jesus is saying that every moment you are freely given the opportunity to see through a different pair of glasses. “Behold the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil or spin, and yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” But that’s only the minor chord. The major one follows, in his anti-anxiety discourse— which is the soul of this passage— that all striving after greater beauty and importance, and greater greatness, is foolishness. It is ultimately like trying to catch the wind. Lilies do not need to do anything to make themselves more glorious or cherished. Jesus is saying that we have much to learn from them about giving up striving. He’s not saying that in a “Get over it” way, as your mother or your last horrible husband did. Instead he’s heartbroken, as when you know an anorexic girl who’s starving to death, as if in some kind of demonic possession. He’s saying that we could be aware of, filled with, and saved by the presence of holy beauty, rather than worship golden calves.”

Anne Lamott in Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith