When Beauty Becomes Worship

Discovering devotion in the quiet art of the early church.

Author

Carolina Loyola
November 16, 2025

Hi friend,

Welcome back to She Speaks Life. ✿


This week, I’ve decided to bring some of the things I have learnt in my recent lectures to bring a message that God has placed on my heart including the rise of Orthodoxy, and the sacred practice of creating icons. A tradition where art becomes prayer, and beauty becomes theology.

It made me reflect deeply on the difference between reverence and idolisation, a tension that still shapes our world today.

✦ ✦ ✦

Feature Story

Invitation to Reverence

One of the most beautiful truths I’ve discovered is that icons aren’t simply painted, or constructed, they are written.
Every stroke is a prayer. Every color, every layer, every symbol carries spiritual meaning.

The process itself is worship, not performance, not perfection, but devotion.
In Orthodox tradition, icons are not objects of worship, but windows into divine presence. They remind the soul that holiness can inhabit the ordinary, that light can dwell within form.

And I think that’s something our world forgets.
We live surrounded by images, but few invite us into reverence. Whether it’s success, relationships, or our own reflection, we often turn good things into ultimate things.

Learning from the early church reminded me that faith was never meant to be performed, it was meant to be practiced.
To see beauty rightly is to let it lead us back to God.

Maybe that’s what modern worship needs: not more noise, but more noticing.

A food for thought this week: Worship isn’t only something we think or say, it’s something we sense.
Does every sense need to be awakened for us to be fully immersed in worship?

In Orthodoxy, even the scent of incense becomes a prayer, an offering that rises, tangible and fragrant, before God.
It’s a reminder that our faith was never meant to live only in our heads, but to be experienced through our whole being.

Speak Life Practice

This week, I want to invite you into two quiet practices:

  1. Discern what holds your gaze.
    Is there something, even something good, that’s taken too much space in your heart?
    Ask yourself: Does this draw me closer to God, or does it distract me from Him?
    Replace idolisation with gratitude. Recognise beauty, but let it point you to its Source.

  2. Create something with reverence.
    Anything to your words, your art, your kindness, can act as worship.
    Remember: it’s not the scale of what you create, but the spirit in which you offer it.

“You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol.”
— Exodus 20:3-4 (NIV)

✦ ✦ ✦

A Final Note

Thank you for taking the time to sit with this reflection.
My hope is that it helps you see beauty through a gentler lens, one rooted in gratitude, humility, and wonder.

None of us hold this perfectly. But even in our imperfect seeing, God is near.
Because worship was never about performance, it’s about presence.

With grace,

P.S. As we move from reverence to response, next week’s reflection will explore gratitude, the formation that happens when we learn to give thanks for even the smallest things