Beauty

Beauty

Who can define beauty? Is it a visual thing? Or is it all in the mind? Or maybe, is it a heart thing? I suppose, as the saying goes, it is all things to all men?

One thing to say from the outset is this - Beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder. I have a friend with whom I have travelled far and wide, ministering to churches all over Europe. I have only seen such love as he displays for people in one other person in my entire life. He tries to see every person he meets through God’s eyes – that is his constant prayer.

He affirms every person he meets with a warmth and love that is, to some, quite beyond anything they have ever experienced in their lives. Some who have never known God’s love, experience it in his presence. I mean, he is no Wigglesworth who convicts people by his presence. Rather, people meet him and the know instinctively that they are with him in God’s presence and that they are loved.

As Isaiah 53:2-4 (MSG) says of Jesus, “The servant grew up before God—a scrawny seedling,  a scrubby plant in a parched field. There was nothing attractive about him,  nothing to cause us to take a second look. He was looked down on and passed over,  a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand. One look at him and people turned away.  We looked down on him, thought he was scum. But the fact is, it was our pains he carried—  our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us.”

This man was/still is surely like Jesus in all these respects, yet people who meet him, flock back again and again to hear him. He affirms people. He prefers others before himself. He edifies whole congregations. He makes people know what Jesus love feels like.

Yet is he beautiful? Not in the physical sense – no. Yet when he smiles you feel like God just walked through the door. He sees the beauty of God all around him. He sees the beauty that God put into people, into their character and heart as well as in their physical appearance.

Such inner beauty is so very rare yet I am so blessed as to know another just like him who reflects Jesus love upon all around him – all the time. He is our pastor – I wish you could all meet him too. It is pastor’s attention to detail and memory that amazes me. He picks out and personally greets every single guest on Sunday morning. He makes them feel loved and welcome in God’s house. And he remembers their names too !!

Sure, both of these Godly men have their foibles, their flaws. Do I idolise them? Definitely not – in fact I am probably what many would call quite disrespectful to both of them – intended in a fun type of way to keep their feet on earth as it were. I am proud to call both of them friends and we love them dearly. But would I call either of them beautiful in the aesthetic sense? Hardly. How about in the Godly sense then? These two are the most godly beautiful people you could ever wish to meet.

You see beauty is an inner thing as well as, or even more than, an external thing.