I read this passage a while ago and have been thinking about it for the past month…I can’t even remember where I read it now.

Bringers of Good News Are Precious and Beautiful

First, preachers of the gospel – bringers of God’s good news – are so precious that we see even their soiled and bloody feet as beautiful. Beautiful feet are not soft, manicured, painted, well-tanned feet. Beautiful feet are like the dirty, worn, wrinkled, leathery, scarred feet from many miles of trekking into remote places with good news that could not be heard any other way. So the first point of quoting Isaiah 52:7 is this: bringers of good news are precious people – people of whom the world is not worthy – beautiful for their worn out bodies in the service of king Jesus. Paul Brand, the medical missionary to India, said that his missionary mother took all the mirrors out of her house when he told her at about age 70 she had aged; and for the last 20 years of her missionary life (into her nineties) she never had a mirror in the house in the mountains of India. When she died villages gathered from all through the mountains to bury a beautiful woman.

That last part really stood out to me.  My first reaction was "I could never do that!  How would I pluck my eyebrows?!":)  But then I started to think about how messed up my idea of beauty is.  I guess I already knew that, but my efforts had been toward fighting my desire to be beautiful instead of correctly redefining what beauty is. 

I remember when I started to learn what beauty was (or what I thought it was).  All of a sudden I felt the need to wear make-up.  To get my hair done.  To wear "cute" clothes.  I even remember when I decided it was necessary to go buy a padded bra.  I’m sure I got the idea that these things were beautiful from a million different places, but I can’t in good conscience blame it on the media or modern culture.  Because the truth is I’m just as guilty of telling people that these things equal beauty….and that beauty equals worth.  How many times have I looked at someone and thought "what the hey are they wearing?" or "good grief look at that hair."

So my question is how do we teach our daughters…and ourselves…what beauty really is?  Do we forsake the braiding of our hair and the putting on of gold jewelry? Do we refuse to let our daughters wear make-up?  Pretty clothes?  What happens when they ask why Mommy gets to wear those things?  So do we refuse to wear make-up ourselves?  I’ll go ahead and say I do not want to do that.  I’d like to say that I can keep all the bells and whistles and still find my beauty and my identity in Christ.  And I’m not saying that’s impossible…I’m just saying it hasn’t happened like that for me.  I know who I am in Christ, but when that familiar desire to feel beautiful comes up again I don’t run to my Bible…I run to my closet.     

Redefining beauty is a nice theory, but I don’t know how to put into action.  I don’t know the answer to any of my questions.  I do know that I want to be beautiful.  I do know that all woman have that in common.  And I know that I don’t want my little girl to think that her beauty and worth comes from her face.  I want to teach her that beauty is a body worn out and completely spent in service to King Jesus.  Maybe the only way to teach her that is to be that kind of beautiful….I long to be that kind of beautiful.