The Slow Work of Beauty

In some seasons of life, everything feels suspended—answers don’t come easily and the way forward is unclear. We’re tempted to believe that nothing is happening, that we’re simply waiting in the void. But maybe the work of beauty, of creating, isn’t ever truly idle. Maybe it continues moving beneath the surface, unseen but steady.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the slow work of nature.

How roots grow before the branches.

How the winter landscape looks barren, but beneath the soil, life is preparing to sprout.

This process is profoundly hopeful, because ground that seems still is, in fact, gathering strength for what’s to come.

In my studio, I see this mirrored in my own creative practice. Some days, the brushstrokes feel pretty aimless. The colors don't blend the way I had in mind. The work feels small, maybe even inconsequential. But if I've learned anything in years of making, it’s this:

The act of creating is an act of faith.

We show up, we apply pigment, we trust that something will emerge. Even when we don’t see results immediately, even when our hands feel uncertain, the process is shaping us as much as the piece we’re working on.

I think that, maybe, the same is true of faith. We don’t always notice how the Lord is at work in our waiting. We don’t always understand the purpose of these in-between spaces. But if we trust in the slowness of beauty, in the invisible rhythms of grace and renewal, we can rest in the assurance that no stretch of quiet and uncertainty is ever wasted.

Maybe today the call is simply to create without expectation.

To lay down a color, to trace a line, to gather pieces of beauty where we find them.

Maybe, in doing so, we participate in the sacred act of waiting well.

I’ve discovered that beauty doesn’t always announce itself in grand gestures, or even boldly. Sometimes it appears in the smallest things—a brushstroke, a shadow on the wall, the quiet persistence of plants growing beneath the surface.

And maybe that’s the invitation.

Not to rush the process.

Not to demand clarity too soon.

But to live fully in this moment, even if it feels unfinished. To keep our hands moving, to stay open to wonder, to let the quiet work of beauty do what it was always meant to do—soften us, steady us, shape us into something new.

Because one day, without even realizing it, we’ll glance up and see that what felt like stillness was never still at all. The colors will have settled into place. The work will have found its voice. And we will have grown into it—rooted and ready.