True Beauty

We live in a world that constantly tells women that to be worthy we must be beautiful. The more attractive and desirable we can be (especially to men) the better we will be, the more value we will have. It's so silly and full of nonsense but it's a voice that runs so deep in our society and insists we spend on makeup and pretty clothes and even plastic surgery. It's a voice that lures us to critique what we see in the mirror every day, to define our worth against other women based upon our looks.

I believe God did create us with the desire to be beautiful and to want to be loved as such. But this world has twisted it, making us believe that we need to embellish ourselves if we don't reach the mold society has for beauty. But let's pause on that for a second.

Who gave society the right to create a mold for beauty anyway? Who gave the media and the makeup companies and the general public the authority to define it? I was once talking to God about that, about how the model for beauty our society has is so constricting, and He whispered this to me, "Why do you think anyone but Me has the authority to decide what beautiful is?"

And that question kind of changed my life.

Why do we think that this imperfect world has more of a right to declare what is beautiful than our God, the Creator of beauty? Isn't the creator of something the only one that can declare whether his work is authentic, whether it has resulted as he intended it to? So then, isn't God the only voice that really matters in our quest for true beauty?

I believe that God made us all beautiful. I really do. But it's not really about whether our features match up to some western ideal of flawless, symmetrical beauty. Rather, He made our beauty inherent, an unshakable part of who we are. I believe when God created each one of us, He stepped back and said to Himself: "She is beautiful."

And if the one who knows beauty best says we are beautiful, then how could it not be true?

#christian #2015