Something
Beautiful
It’s something that captivates
everyone. Something that is fleeting yet so desired and cherished. Often times
it is viewed incorrectly, and distorted.
It leaves some vain, and others in insecurity. A six letter word that more
times than not, requires more of our time, energy, money, and thoughts than
what we spend on our friends and family, and sadly our walk with The Lord. It
has puzzled artists and philosophers alike. There is nothing quite like it.
Beauty.
What is beauty? What is it that
determines what is beautiful, and who is it exactly that gets to decide what is
beautiful and what is not? It has been said that beauty is in the eye of the
beholder. Is that true, or dp we have a set list of things that are beautiful
and things that are not? Even if we don’t think we have such a list, in a way,
we sort of do, whether or not, we acknowledge it.
For instance, almost everyone, who
looks at a red rose, still on the vine with dew on its peddles and a fragrance
like none other, will agree that it is ‘beautiful’. In other instances, like an
elderly lady, with hair as white as snow, and fingers stiff from arthritis, age
spots covering her wrinkled face, and having the smell of a grandmother, reading
to her grandchildren, is that still as ‘beautiful’ as a rose? What is the
difference? What is it that would make Carrie
Underwood more beautiful than Norma
Freeman?
Didn’t God
make them both?
In our
culture it is so difficult to feel beautiful. With so many voices and pictures,
with fake, airbrushed, ‘beautiful’ women on magazines that try to tell us what
is expected and required of us to be acceptable and worthy of praise in the
eyes of others. Even if it is never said, or typed in any of their articles, it
is displayed on every one of their covers, with the same stereo-type women on
the cover. Hollywood has painted us a picture of beauty
as being tall, thin, with blue eyes and blonde hair. With this image of
‘beauty’ before us, not only is it hard to feel beautiful, but also to remember
that everyone has the potential to be beautiful, if we ever even knew that at
all.
Being beautiful is so much more than
being merely physically attractive.
It is more than having the latest
style of clothing, being super skinny, and having a painted face. What makes a person genuinely beautiful is
when a person shows respect for their self and those around them, whether those
around them deserve respect or not!
When
someone is clothed in strength and dignity, when they can hold their head high
in confidence, because their beauty comes from within, and yet they are still
humble and not proud.
Beauty from within comes when a person is more concerned about
others than their own face, and hairdo’s. When they can see and understand the
needs of others, and pay more attention to that than the little blemish they
have on their nose. Beauty is more than a word, it’s more than a super model, and
it is more than looks.
Beauty is something that shouldn’t
be desired, yet obtained by acts of service, and caring for the less
fortunate.
Beauty begins when we stop looking in the mirror of Cosmopolitan Magazine and start looking in the mirror of THE CROSS and THE WORD OF GOD. Who is it that we are trying to impress anyways? I pray at the end of my life, when I stand before God, I hold in my hands more pictures of those I’ve won to God, than I do of myself.
“For charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting,
but a woman who fears the Lord will be greatly praised.”
~Proverbs
31:30~
