When I think of beautiful things, the first thing that comes to mind is a sunrise. Can you imagine the dark sky slowly changing from inky black to shades of blue, then reds and orange paint the sky just before the blazing yellow sun bursts through the horizon, until you can no longer look at it, for its brilliant rays become blinding?
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Margaret Wolfe Hungerford wrote in a book in 1878; this quote has been used countless times since. While this statement is true, the focus is on what you see with your eyes. What about what our hearts see?
We sing that Jesus is beautiful, yet Isaiah 53:2-3 says, “... He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.”
The New Testament does not give any account of what He looked like. No description of his build, or facial features. In fact, when the Roman guards showed up in the garden of Gethsemane, Judas had to point out who Jesus was so they would arrest the correct Jewish man.
What is it about Jesus that is beautiful? Who He is, what He did, and how He loves us.
He is God! He came down to dwell among us as a human; with all the constraints of an earthly body. He was hungry, tired, and endured pain. He did not survive the cross but died on it. Then He rose from the dead! And all of it He did so we could be reunited with the Father. What love! That is beautiful.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 says: “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”
You are included in that “everything” that He has made. The world emphasizes the outward appearances. I challenge you to look at yourself through the eyes of Jesus. See the beauty within and delight in the story He is writing in your life.