Beauty

It's been a while since I've posted (busy growing a baby and taking care of family).  However, the Mother's Day message at Trinity Church in Cedar Hill, TX was thought provoking and I wanted to share it.

The pastor asked us the question "What is Beauty?"  What is beautiful?  Today we may define it as certain facial attributes, a certain size, maybe something in nature, a newborn baby.... I can think of many things that are beautiful.  It can be different for everyone.

He began to throw some untraditional examples out there..... the human network of nerves is beautiful.  The wrinkles on an old man's face are beautiful.  Basically, anything you gaze at long enough will reveal it's beauty.  Interesting thought.... I believe that.  I can find beauty in anything.  I can even find beauty in seemingly bad situations.  The human spirit can be beautiful as it rises to face impossible scenarios.

Psalm 34:8 says "Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him."  The word 'good' is translated from a word that means 'beautiful'.  So it reads "Taste and see that the Lord is beautiful".   This prompted his statement that "beauty arrives through sustained and adoring attentiveness". This can be applied to our lives by keeping a sustained and adoring gaze on what we know to be true.  When things in life don't go the way we expect them to or we feel we are dealt an unfair hand, maintaining a sustained and adoring gaze on God's beauty will help us make it through.  He then will pour out his grace to give us strength and restore our beauty.


Think of Leah in the Bible.  She was given in marriage as a trick to a husband that loved her sister.  Talk about feeling rejected!  After she bears her first child, Reuben, she says "The Lord has surely looked upon my affliction" (maybe my husband will love me now).  After the second, Simeon, she says "God has heard me" (God has heard that my husband does not love me).  After the third, Levi, she says "Now at last my husband will become attached to me, because I have borne him three sons" (If he doesn't love me, he at least has to respect my child-bearing abilities).  After the fourth son, Judah, she says "This time I will praise the LORD" (sustained and adoring gaze on God's beauty).  This is the key.  Through her heartache she longed for love from her husband.  Her life was less than ideal.  But what she missed in the birth of her first three sons is that God is the only one that can fulfill that need for love.  He finds her beautiful.  She is his creation.  She can find refuge in Him.


Because of her choice to praise instead of focusing on the less than ideal circumstances she lived in, Leah was blessed in life.  Look at her legacy!  Judah, her fourth son, began the line of kings that contained the likes of David and Solomon.... and, oh yeah, JESUS.  From the line of her third son, Levi, came the line of priests (like Aaron).  She was buried in honor and at the end of his life, her husband Jacob requested to be buried next to her, not Rachel.  


So things turned around for Leah.  She chose to praise in the face of adversity, to love in an environment where there was no love, to retain her beauty (not bitterness) through God's grace.  What is beautiful?  Really, think about it.  What is beautiful?  Beauty happens when indignities and injustices turn to praise. Beauty happens when we trust and celebrate God's design (not our own).  Go be beautiful!