January 12

WHAT IS BEAUTY?

Father, thank You for bringing me to this place and this time today. I ask You to speak to me right now, and to let Your Word breathe life into my heart. Please use these next few moments to bring me to more of a fullness of You and to learn more of Your Glory and how to leave the footprints of Jesus everywhere I go today. In Jesus Name I pray. Amen!

Read Isaiah 52:13 - 53:12

This is a very long and detailed passage. There is a lot that we could discuss. Today as I read these fifteen verses, I am drawn to the second part of verse two of chapter 53. That draws my mind to this question: what is beauty? What makes something attractive to us? Why do I think the dark haired woman that just entered Starbucks is more attractive than her blonde friend? Doesn’t that reduce beauty to a very subjective and relative state? Surely true beauty is more than that.

I am somewhat taken aback by the aforementioned verse. This passage, oft called the gospel in the Old Testament, is one of the longest continuous prophecies about Christ. So as I read this part of verse two, I wonder, wasn’t Christ good-looking? I mean He was God. Although I doubt He looked anything like the various pictures people paint of Him, surely He was attractive. The prophet says something quite different of the coming Messiah though:

“nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him”

So why is this such a shock to me? Why am I so certain that Jesus was in fact beautiful?

What do I know of Him? Well to start I know nothing of His appearance, other than He probably had much darker skin than me and some Jewish features. I do know things He said and did though. Is this enough to make someone beautiful? I have never heard the voice of the previously mentioned dark haired woman. All I know is of her appearance, some of her sense of fashion, and of the presence of a quite large diamond ring on her left hand. Yet I would say that Jesus is far more beautiful than her or any person I have met or seen. Well then, words and actions must be a far more critical criteria for determining beauty than physical appearance.

Honestly though, I do not live this way. Much too often I let someone’s outward appearance determine whether or not I will befriend them. It hits me rather hard when I realize that if I applied this norm to Christ, I might choose to have nothing to do with Him. I could blame society or the media for this type of thinking, but they are not at fault. My own shallowness is.

Today I plead with you to leave His footprints by looking for beauty that is deeper than skin level. Search for it in the words and actions of others.

Leave His footprints as you walk today!