A friend of mine (let's call her Heather) once asked me if she should wear a dress to an event. She even sent me a picture of her in the dress along with her question. She looked beautiful. I told her of course she should. Her reason for asking? A girl that would be attending the event who has a reputation for being mean had the same dress and Heather was afraid of being talked about by that mean girl and her friends, Regina George and Karen Smith.
It's really hard to remember that we are important too when you see impossibly tan girls with pearly white teeth, perfectly styled hair, manicures, and outfits that look like they were hand-selected by a Vogue fashion consultant. There is one crucial thing that we must remember, however. We are so important that someone died for us.
Did you know that the Bible actually talks about Jesus' appearance? Isaiah 53:2 says this:
"He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him,
and no beauty that we should desire Him."
Yet even though He wasn't physically attractive, Christ was the most beautiful person who ever walked this Earth. Truthfully, the only beautiful thing about us is Christ in us.
Audrey Hepburn once said that happy girls are the prettiest. If happy girls are the prettiest, then girls who find their joy in Christ must be simply radiant. Psalm 139:14 says, "I will praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." You see, when God made us, He made no mistakes. When we accepted God's gift of salvation, we became beautiful through Christ and only through Him. There is no standard that the world can create that will take away from the beauty Christ puts in us. We can, however, take away from our beauty with the things we add to our lives.
If you read much Dr. Seuss as a child, you probably know that Yertle the Turtle was king of the pond. He lived on a stone, but wasn't happy with his view so he made other turtles stack up on top of each other so he could stand on top of all of them and look over all he was king of. Some people are that way about appearance. They either so unhappy with how they look or they are so happy with how they look that they have to bring in others to make themselves feel better. It often starts simply enough. They merely pull in a few others to reaffirm their attractiveness. After a while, it isn't enough to simply reaffirm each other- they move on to judging others based on their appearance. This girl is too manly. That girl is chubby. This girl dresses poorly. Another girl is too pale.
When people get to this point, other people begin to notice. It won't be long before they fall like Yertle the Turtle did once people finally had enough. When we base everything on comparisons, we all fall.
The problem is that we get caught up in horizontal comparisons. We are looking all around us instead of setting our gaze on things above. Time spent comparing ourselves to those around us is time wasted. The only person we should be comparing ourselves to is Christ.
When we try to fit the world's beauty standards, we will never measure up. When we try to become more like Christ, we have a better chance. We will never be just like Him, but when our soul desire is to have a heart that looks like His, a beautiful light will shine through our lives. Trying to be like Him is a life long journey where He guides us and gives us strength every step of the way. Trying to fit the world's beauty standards is like running back to back timed marathons for the rest of your life with no relief. When you finally finish one, you are already behind on another.
When the only beauty standard we are trying to live up to is the one set by Christ, we will still be less than flawless but we certainly have a better chance of becoming beautiful. We are beautiful when we stop working on our outside and let Him shape our hearts.
