23 | Beauty

In 1992, the city of Sarajevo was under siege. Buildings were burned and broken, streets filled with rubble, and snipers watched from the hills. Fear and hunger shaped daily life, yet somehow, life continued in small, fragile ways.

One day in May, a mortar shell struck a line of people waiting for bread, killing twenty-two of them. In response, a professional musician named Vedran Smailović carried his cello into the bombed-out square. For twenty-two days, one for each victim, he performed Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor—a hauntingly beautiful piece of music—while the shelling and gunfire continued around him.

He wore his concert suit. He sat among the ruins. He played while death lingered in the air.

They called him the Cellist of Sarajevo. Naive, perhaps. But powerful. Deeply, disarmingly powerful. He was an easy target, but no one shot him. Not because they couldn’t, but because they didn’t want to. The beauty of music had become a weapon against the horrors of war.

_ _ _

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” From the start, creation was declared good. Later the psalms echo this goodness: “For the Lord is good and his love endures forever.” “From Zion, perfect in beauty, God shines forth.” God is good, true, and beautiful. These three – truth, goodness, and beauty — are inseparable. Philosophers call them the transcendentals. They belong together in perfect harmony, like notes in a chord. Beauty is not an accessory to truth and goodness. It is an intrinsic part of what is good and true.

Beauty has a kind of order to it. Chaos, on the other hand, is never beautiful. It is unbounded, unhealthy, destructive. But when complexity and diversity are held together, that unity is beauty.

An orchestra is beautiful not because it is loud or perfect, but because each instrument plays the right note, at the right time, in the right rhythm. When the musicians play whatever they want, that’s chaos (–or Jazz, depending on your tolerance).

Ray Hughes once said that beauty is the ingredient God put in the earth to serve as a holy reminder to taste and see that He is good in every circumstance. Beauty is an invitation to awe and wonder.

The Bible calls us to seek beauty: “One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord […].” “Keep your thoughts continually fixed on all that is authentic and real, honorable and admirable, beautiful and respectful, pure and holy, merciful and kind.”

This may sound like a strange statement (especially to humanitarians, but that’s ok): beauty is never neutral. Creating something beautiful matters. Failing to do so is not just unfortunate — it’s a missed opportunity to reflect God’s character in the world. 

Beauty is not decoration. Beauty has nothing to do with luxury or kitsch. It is part of human dignity. 

Beauty is not optional. Beauty is serious business.

Shelter, food, and water are about survival. But beauty is about life in dignity and hope.

Two years ago, I faced an illness that left me bedridden for months. I could barely walk. I depended entirely on others. The days were long, silent, and dark. One afternoon, four of my closest friends came to visit me. I was the opposite of a host. They brewed their own tea, set the table, and talked softly around me. I could barely sit with them, yet it was one of the most beautiful moments of my life. It was a moment of love, presence, and the quiet defiance of despair. Beauty and suffering often walk hand in hand. The deeper the pain, the greater the need for beauty.

In humanitarian work, I encounter that truth again and again. We stand with people in deep suffering. Upholding dignity is a form of beauty. Food and water sustain life; sharing a meal is beautiful. A shelter provides protection; feeling at home is beautiful. Receiving a blanket; feeling warm again is beautiful.

I often think of our work as playing the cello. I can’t play a cello. I can barely hold a guitar. But that doesn’t matter. God asks only that we use what’s in our hands. When God called Moses, He asked, “What is that in your hand?” It was just a staff, but in God’s hands, it became a sign of freedom. Five loaves and two fish fed thousands. A jar of perfume became an act of worship. The artisans of the tabernacle turned craftsmanship into holiness. God uses small, ordinary things to reveal extraordinary beauty.

_ _ _

When a reporter later asked Smailović, the Cellist, if he was crazy to play the cello in a war zone, he replied, “You ask me if I am crazy for playing the cello while my city is being bombed. But shouldn’t you be asking: why are they bombing the city while I am playing the cello?”

_ _ _

He wasn’t naive. He was reminding the world what life is about. C.S. Lewis once wrote: "If we are going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb, when it comes, find us doing sensible and human things – praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts – not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs."

That’s what the cellist did. He chose to do the human thing. To play his cello. To make beauty visible when the world had forgotten it.

Playing the cello didn’t heal the wounded or feed the hungry. But it mattered. Deeply. 

Surrounded by chaos and suffering, the beauty of playing this cello is an act of resistance against pain, chaos, destruction, war, and suffering. 

Beauty is an active contribution to restoring hope and upholding human dignity.

We may not all have a cello, but each of us has something in our hands. Something God can use to bring dignity, hope, and light into the world.

Like musicians in an orchestra, let’s not leave our notes unplayed.