You know the all too often the saying states, that "beauty is in the eye of its beholder" (whoever it is supposed to be at the time)
However, I truly disagree. Beauty is not dictated upon the acceptance of another person's acceptance of us! Beauty is in the eye of our beholder, Almighty God!
Psalm 139:14 states,
"I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;your works are wonderful,
I know that full well." \0/
So often, I can definitely relate to many times how we can be so hard on ourselves or pick apart ourself for not realizing that we were made after God's own image... created in His image and likeness...
For example, coming out of high school and going off to college I remember saying to myself while on an internship over one summer, "When I get a good sum saved from my internship I am going to get a nose job."
I even looked through the yellow pages while interning in Minneapolis, because I was determined to change my nose one summer because of me not accepting my uniqueness as it was. It was not til out of the blue my would-be now husband- but back then brother in the Lord wrote me out of the blue and told me He was praying for me that week, and that "It was on His heart", while he was just praying, for all the Christian fellowship that was away, that God loves me and to remember that.....every aspect." And he, Howard, went on to say these words- I quote, "And I know this may sound strange, but God impressed upon my heart to let you know He loves you and He even loves your nose?... your nose is beautiful!"
Now I had talked to no one about this plan. No sister in the Lord. No brother. No parent
No sibling. No one. Only God could have known and revealed this to him of all people at the time...a brother in the Lord thousands of miles away, in Raleigh at the time on his internship at IBM in North Carolina ....still laughing about this...
So I belabor this private occurrence about my life to show how much God cares enough about us to interrupt another person's day to remind us sometimes His Word- down to the nitty-gritty details. And I am sure you can see God's hand in your life, similarly, in some way if you just think about it. How He uses other people to remind us of His Word and truth.
Each and every one of us has a beautiful piece of the reflection of who God is in all of His nature and beauty! So it's so important that we stop picking ourselves apart from what we measure as the "standard" or man's measure for what is acceptable or beautiful is.
We are each made after the image of Christ and wonderfully made by Him, no matter how uniquely created from the next person we be. He loves our different noses, eyes, shape, body structure, stature, weight, skin/hair color, wrinkles, voice, freckles or whatever unique markings/traits we have and the list goes on and on.....
He calls us still yet beautiful, in how we are. For EACH OF US is a representation of Him, our creator in some great way! We are made in His beautiful likeness- no matter the shade, accent , features of nose, eyes, skin, body build....we are a reflection of Him. We are each fearfully and wonderfully made...
And when we can accept God's Word about us as true, then and only then can we begin to accept and began to truly appreciate the beautiful things in, not only ourselves, but also in other's life and not measure them or ourself by some false narrative or standard.
If we do not believe it ourselves, we will not appreciate ourself; or uniqueness we bring to the table....and become our worst critic at best!
So it's such an important reminder today... and always, to know, "we are fearfully and wonderfully made!"
Father help us to accept ourselves the way we are, and to stop hating ourselves. We love and thank you for the realization that we were made in your image and likeness! Truly you say that we're loved, accepted and are beautiful just as we are, and that we are GOOD thing...
You create no bad thing, as You are the creator of ALL that is good, and we receive of that today in Jesus' mighty name! Amen!
#BEAUTIFYHER
