What makes something or someone beautiful? Have you ever wondered that? I have. Typically, when we think of beauty we immediately consider physical traits that whatever society we're a part of have deemed to be attractive.
The trouble with that concept of beauty is that with time or situation a person's physical appearance will likely change. Hair color will change, body size will change, skin will change, everything will change. So what then? What happens to the "beauty" of that person? We start to then use phrases like, she looks good for her age, or you look great, considering you just had a baby, or you look so much younger, now that you've gotten rid of that gray hair.
This may be simplistic, but perhaps the last thing we should consider when we consider beauty is how a person actually looks. I have personally experienced someone's good looks disappear before my eyes after I got to know them and their unkind personality. Conversely, the same happened when I met someone who wouldn't be considered physically attractive, but after getting to know them they became more and more beautiful.
As women, we can be most guilty of playing the beauty game with ourselves - and that is dangerous. You know the game. It's when we're constantly judging ourselves based on what we see on television or in beauty ads. It's the game where we think getting bigger breasts or butt or lips or longer hair will make us more wanted or worthy of male attention. It's the game where we've been 29 for 10 years lest someone find out our real age. It's the game where we won't be seen without makeup and being seen with fake hair is better than ever being seen with our real hair. It's the game where without realizing, we exhibit to our daughters that this type of "beauty" is better than real beauty - the beauty of being you.
Please don't misunderstand me. This is not a call to arms against makeup or weave or simply trying to look your best. Rather, it's a reminder, or perhaps the first time you may have heard, that as you put on that lipstick or blush or dye those gray hairs with or without it - you are still beautiful.
People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.
1 Samuel 16:7