In the Eyes of the Beholder (part 1)

I find today's blog entry a little harder to write than most. In fact, I've come up with three of four different introductions, am struggling to find a catchy title, summarizing an eternity of things I could say, and really don't enjoy discussing a topic I struggle with so much. In fact, I'm reading a very convicting book on it right now. It's called "Redefining Beautiful" (by Jenna Lucado Bishop, who is an incredible woman of God, by the way). I bet you can probably guess what's been laid on my heart to talk about... Beauty. It really is a tough subject to address, since when it's addressed in magazines, it just tells you how you have to look. It gives you unrealistic, unattainable attributes to attempt to morph your body into. It tells you that in order to fit in, in order to be defined as beautiful, you have to meet certain standards. You have to dress a certain way, be a certain size, wear your hair a certain way. Honestly, I could go on forever talking on this one subject alone, and one blog post would certainly not be enough to cover this topic (see: part 1). However, I hope to hit a few main points and address things of some importance and maybe hitting home for you. Now, we all know how society defines beautiful. But how should WE define beautiful? How does God define beautiful?
Well, that question is not too terribly difficult to answer. The Bible tells us that God created man in His image (Genesis 1:26-27). God is perfect, right? So, that means He must be beautiful, right? Correct. God made us in His image, so that makes us beautiful, too! "But, we don't all look the same." I know, but God made you YOU. God made each and every person so intricately and unique that there will never be another person EVER who looks just like you, who acts just like you. People often use the phrase "God broke the mold when He made you." Don't take it as the insult it's often used as. It's true. I imagine God, after he creates us, he takes the mold he used, and smashes it, so it can never be used again. Psalm 139:14- "I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful; I know that full well." To me, that verse says, God took the time to piece every last bit of my being together. Who takes the time working on a project they aren't proud of, that they don't want perfection on, that they don't want to look the best it can possibly be?
The Bible even tells us that our BURDENS, yes, our HARDSHIPS, are beautiful! I don't know about you, but when I'm struggling with something, I don't think it's very beautiful. Ecclesiastes 3 has a lot to say about hardships. "He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end (vs. 11)." The verse right before that says "I have seen the burden God has laid on men." Our hardships become beautiful. Now, there are quite a few analogies I could use for this one... One being the process of making pure gold. In order to make the purest of pure gold, a refiner takes the pot of gold and sticks it over the fire. When the pot gets hot enough, all the impurities in the gold surface and the refiner scrapes it off. But he's not done. He continues this process until every last impurity is out of the gold. Or how about a diamond? It takes LOTS of heat and TONS of tons of pressure on this cold, black rock used to cook food over a barbeque. But the end result is this incredibly beautiful, one of a kind gem. What about a pearl? A pear starts off as a piece of dirt. It gets swallowed up by an oyster, and the oyster gets irritated by the seemingly insignificant speck. The dirt gets spit on- the mucus of the oyster. But in the end, it becomes this soft, beautiful, rare item that people pay thousands of dollars to get. All those things are things of beauty, of value, of worth. But they didn't start out that way. Our trials are what make us beautiful.