Friday, January 27, 2012

We Are Beautiful To God

Charm is deceptive, and beauty does not last; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised. -- Proverbs 31:30

Demi Moore has been the subject of much speculation and gossip these last few days. She was rushed to a hospital. She has been admitted for treatment. She spoke in a magazine interview of worrying that she would reach the end of her life and find out that she wasn’t loveable after all. It’s just so sad and so tragic.

She is a talented actress and a beautiful woman. Apparently, she is also incredibly unhappy and insecure. I want to tell her about Jesus. I want to urge her to cling to Him and to believe what He says. I doubt that she knows how loved she really is.

Our self-worth must come from God and our relationship with Him. We are His children, beloved above all else. We are beautiful in His eyes, whether we are a newborn, at the peak of our physical beauty as adults, or beyond counting the wrinkles and gray hairs. He loves us.

We live in a world that seems to value physical beauty above all. We determine someone’s worth based on possessions rather than character. We are so lopsided in what we think is it any wonder that any dent in our expectations for ourselves makes us collapse into a heap of self-loathing?

Or anger. We tend to blame God when things don’t go the way we planned. We just know it’s His fault when we don’t get exactly what we want when we want it. We have a sense of entitlement that doesn’t match with what’s inside us. We need those external things to determine our worth, to fill us up, to make us secure. But they can’t and they won’t.

My great aunt used to say, “Pretty is as pretty does.” I still smile when I think about it. But she was on to something really important: Our actions determine how we look because those actions reflect our character. That’s what’s important. We can try to hide it beneath a mound of make-up, an expensive car or flashy lifestyle but it always comes out in the end.

And then we’re left with a shell of who we could be if we’d only believe what God tried to tell us long ago. Our worth comes from Him. We have value because of Him. We are loved. We are safe. We are worthy. And we are never, ever alone.

None of us have to reach a state of emotional collapse. God hears us when we cry out to Him. He reaches for us, ready to hold us close. To heal us. To soothe our battered souls. We are beautiful in God’s eyes and His eyes are the only ones that have ever really mattered