Becoming Beautiful

I love reading through The Message.  The words used and the phrases penned always seem to bring clarity to the portion of Scripture I am studying.  This morning I read from 1 Timothy 2:10 where Paul continues to instruct  Timothy as to how believers, in this verse women, should live.

And I want women to get in there with the men in humility before God, not primping before a mirror or chasing the latest fashions but doing something beautiful for God and becoming beautiful doing it.

As I read through this again, my heart is heavy at how we’ve distorted our definition of beautiful from God’s definition of beautiful.  We have put so much emphasis on what we look like on the outside; how we dress, how we wear our hair (or in my case, the color of my hair!),  how our faces look (heaven forbid we have a wrinkle or two), what accessories do we have to complete our outfits?  I’m all for trying to look nice, stylish and put together, but what bothers me is our tendency to overdo it.

By God’s definition, what makes us beautiful is not what we look like on the outside, but rather,  how we actually spend our time.  Do we use our time seeking after selfish pursuits from which we alone will benefit or do we use our time to serve others?  Do we wake up asking ourselves, ‘How can I do something beautiful for God today?’  I don’t know about you, but the times I feel the most beautiful are the times I am doing something for someone else.  I can be all dressed up and still feel empty inside if all I am focusing on is myself.

I want to become more beautiful this year.  As I write this, I am starving from cutting my calorie intake to a mere 1500 calories per day in an attempt to fit into my clothes a little bit better.  But ultimately, this is not the kind of beauty I want to achieve.  I want to become more beautiful by doing more for God.  I want to make a more assertive effort to help the poor and needy in my community.  It’s very cold outside right now.  We’re supposed to have some snow by tomorrow morning. I’m sure there are people all over my town who are cold and need shelter.  ‘How can I help?’ is the cry of my heart this year.

Will you become more beautiful with me and commit to doing something good for God this year?  There are so many people with so many needs. Let’s ask God to show us where He wants us to help Him and how He would like us to serve.  This is a prayer I know He’ll answer.  And my friends, think how beautiful we’ll become!  Hollywood and it’s stars won’t have a thing over us!!  Let’s do it, shall we?