OMG!

OMG!  The Biltmore Estate! Ever heard of it or know anything about it?  Located in

Asheville, North Carolina and built around 1896 by George Vanderbilt?  It’s the largest private home in the United States with 250 rooms! It sits on 8,000 acres of Blue Ridge hills with its opulent Gilded Age luxury which includes artwork from Monet and Renoir, a bowling alley and an indoor swimming pool.  My wife and I spent 8 hours at the estate and on the grounds last week after attending her company’s Christmas party in Charlotte.  I knew nothing about the Vanderbilt family but now I know way more than I desire to share in this brief blog.  Suffice it to say, my wife is a total gamer when it comes to exploring new opportunities to experience a travel adventure.  So, like the 1.5 million other tourists who visit this 175,000 square foot home with its current 36 fully decorated Christmas trees located throughout, we ventured into the abyss of overwhelming architecture, art, design, and décor with our little handheld audio devices giving us 35 stations worth of history throughout the house.  Boy howdy!

We got to see how the 99.9% of the world could never imagine how to be that wealthy and live in such a way. But I must say, it makes me ponder how mankind, at its most strident effort to experience a heaven on earth is driven to create what at least 1.5 million visitors and most of the world would admire as amazing and wonderful.  Perhaps a taste of heaven?  Maybe a shot at what we’d hope for in heaven but likely a shot in the dark comparatively given that heaven is unimaginable.  Creation itself is an incredible statement for how genius beauty and grandeur reflect what must be true of God.  But also, the ingenuity of mankind to create wonderful art, soul penetrating music, incredible engineering feats (we also saw the Tutankhamun exhibit on the Biltmore grounds.  Talk about art and engineering nearly 5,000 years ago!).  And the scientific discoveries along with technology.  A double “boy howdy!”  It might be fair to say the best of God is somehow wired into the DNA of all living things, but we humans are very, very special.  We are very capable of being God-like which makes perfect sense if indeed we are created in his image.

Though I was completely captivated by the Biltmore home and estate, and how it seemed to me to reflect God’s fingerprint in terms of how we human beings are driven to create beauty and driven to explore science and technology, it also begged the question in my mind as to deeper reality of God which is “God is love,”  and how love is the key to keeping perspective in relation to all the magnificent things man can do, discover and create.  Without love, all we can do and create amounts to nothing and worse yet, all we can do and create becomes a god we worship.  Given what man is capable accomplishing, it is no surprise that God created something grand out of nothing and better yet, give us Jesus who can hold all things in perspective.  If we choose to allow him to do so.  Merry Christmas.