Beautiful You

Beauty pierces.

Beauty creates desire, shows that we want or need something, and so drives us toward the beloved. If the need is strong enough, this absolute romance will drive us to the very face of God. God is beautiful, totally, absolutely beautiful, and even a tiny pang, the slightest longing that sends us Godward, will drive us forever toward His face if we heed desire.

A problem with meetings in a pandemic is being forced to stare at one’s own face too often as in an online meeting. I finally learned you can turn this feature off, but too late for my ego!

Perhaps there is somebody, somewhere, somehow that enjoys this revelation of how others see us, but at fifty-six, I do not. Every flaw is there in high definition and as the oldest (by a good bit) at our School and College, the day ends with me feeling . . . not beautiful. I am Zoomed in and I do not like what I see. Some of this is the result of mistakes I have made, not enough sunscreen, but much of my discontent comes from accepting images fed to me of how I should look that are unrealistic and different than any human being can be: images manipulated by artists and machines.

We are sadder than we should be, more broken than we must be, because the world and devils have told our flesh what we should and must be in ways contrary to reality.

We are beautiful, for the most part, really, objectively beautiful and we do not know this is true.

Imagine aliens coming to Earth from another planet. This has never happened (as far as we know!) so we can imagine them as anything from insect overlords to Bible Baptists in search of Bethlehem! If galactic pilgrims came, never having seen a human and searching for the birthplace of the God-man, then all of us would look much the same to them. The excitement of seeing a human would be great and all humans would seem beautiful.

They might even find the distinctions between male and female too subtle at first. The old woman would look like the young woman to them and (for all we know) they might become fascinated with the glories of the elbow. With time, they would learn our distinctions, or those science would teach (big/small, old/young), but they would also recognize the beauty of the human form.

Why?

Humans are beautiful. This is an opinion, but an opinion based on the facts. Created in the image of God, body and soul, people as people are all beautiful. The eternal idea of beauty is expressed in many ways both in each human being and in the varied look that humans have as they grow older. Nothing is lost as the human dies, since the soul goes to God awaiting a new glorified body in paradise.

When I see my beloved wife, Hope, I can see this beauty, transforming over time, becoming glorified. This is harder to see in self. Perhaps this matters a bit less, helping me dodge vanity, but this failure to see what is real can be toxic if it leads to false conclusions such as thinking anyone, including self, ugly.