Beauty Of the Everyday Kind

Beauty is missing from our culture. Oh, there are still a few beautiful buildings put up, and you can buy pretty things, and you can find artists making art, but the everyday making of beauty is missing.  We have devalued it until it has almost completely vanished. The mentality that if your work is not producing a paycheck then your work has no value is killing off everyday beauty. Home making is both work and an art form that is almost dead from neglect because it does not bring in a paycheck.

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Few are those who knit or crochet beautiful things for their homes. Most are now in the workforce doing jobs that bring paychecks. Few are the seamstresses who could make clothing for their families, and covers for chairs, and draperies–all things to make beauty–most of them are out in the workforce getting a paycheck. The person who created a beautiful table set, and home made beautiful food, is out getting the paycheck and hasn’t the energy for the niceties that make beauty happen.

Some amazing people manage to balance working for a paycheck and creating beauty, but far more cannot. The result is a loss of everyday beauty– the kind a parent at home with the kids was expected to at least try to create. My mother’s work could be seen in the afghan on the back of the couch, the needlepoint in the frame on the wall, the arrangement of furniture, the pillows, draperies,  and table settings(chosen or made), cleanliness, and meals. Our whole family benefited from her work.

Everyday beauty is created in the course of the work we call home-making.  Home making used to be considered a full time job, and women learned from childhood how to be good at it and bring their own unique touch to doing it. This effort takes TIME and ENERGY apart from the time and energy spent on the children and the marriage.

The hours reserved for the work of home making have been reassigned to the making of a paycheck because our culture chosen to demean all work that lacks a paycheck.  Everyday beauty is an art which our culture has deemed unfit to exist.  We need to see the sin in this, repent, and VALUE the making of beauty again.

Dear Lord, please help us to realize the value of beauty and the value of the person whose work creates it for us. Help us ALL come to the recognition that work worthy of doing sometimes has no paycheck attached and is still of great value. +Amen.

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