4 August 2010 (Revee/Shavu'ot) Day #142, 5934 AM
The Search for Beauty
What Kind Do You Have?
Recently our local town acquired its first body-building centre to join the mushrooming number of beauty and massage parlours. Not surprisingly, because of the revival of the ancient Greek cult of the body in the West and elsewhere, this new landmark has become quite successful while everywhere else businesses are struggling to keep going during the current recession. We live in a body-centric culture for sure which in a way is inevitable when the spirit becomes neglected.
It has been said that only two things make any real impact on us: beauty and death. And I would agree. Ironically for the Christian who has his or her eyes on Christ, the beauty he experiences is enhanced year by year whereas the beauty the world seeks just diminishes with the march of the seasons. A man or woman in Christ experiences a daily increase in the beauty of character whilst the man or woman of the world must witnesses the daily disintegration of outward beauty as a result of the ravages of time. She is constantly applying cosmetics, and increasingly so, both inwardly and outwardly to maintain the illusion of perpetual youth. All all along it is only skin-deep.
Yahweh does not need creams, powders or workout shops to make things lovely. As the summer draws to a close and I look over all the photographs I have taken of my garden and in nature, I see an extraordinary amount of natural beauty all around. Inside the house we have quite a few plastic imitation plants and flowers to give some colour during the cold and dark winter months but they are nothing compared to the real thing that was outside.
Yahweh has given each man the recipe for everlasting beauty, promising us that if we faithfully follow the recipe laid down in His Word, that we will have inner natural beauty both now and in the resurrection for ever. For what we are inside is what we will also look like in the resurrection of the body. Over the years I have seen visions of what people look like inside and been quite surprised, both pleasantly and unpleasantly. A person lacking in physical beauty today who is full of inner beauty will inherit a body to match that inner beauty in the resurrection. We become only what we are out of sight.
Scripture tells us, in spite of attempts by artists over the centuries to portray Him as some Sylvester Stallone or Robert Powells, that there was nothing particularly spectacular about Yah'shua's outer appearance. He would not have been viewed as some 'gorgeous hunk' by your modern secular woman. One thing that is clear clear, though, was that He was possessed of such inward beauty and character that people who loved light and truth were spontaneously drawn to Him like moths to a light. He literally shone which is perhaps why one prophet described Him as the "Sun of Righteousness" (Mal.4:2, NKJV).
Most people, sadly, are too busy feverishly seeking after the futile quest for everlasting the outer beauty that fades and perishes instead of the inner one of the soul which is forever - and that includes a lot of deceived Christians and Messianics who are too strongly influenced and controlled by the prevailing culture of vanity. Real beauty lies in the quality of life that Yah'shua demonstrated and not the vain-glory, whoring and drunkenness of the world. Men and women who parade their bodies do not impress me and in truth they are deluding themselves. The beauty of our outer forms is only in any case for our spouses, and not for the world. Everything else is just pornography.
Would you like to be beautiful forever, living with beautiful people in a beautiful world? If you do, you must get your beauty kit from the Saviour of the world, not from the decadent fashion salons of iniquity - a kit that is a free gift if you will receive it on the terms on which it is given:
"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of Elohim (God) is eternal life in Messiah Yah'shua (Christ Jesus) our Master (Lord)" (Rom.6:23, NKJV).
Life's Garden
The flowers you meet in Life's garden are flowers of every colour and hue,
There are greedy, vain and stuck-up ones, and those who just love to rob you;
But others you meet are kind-hearted, and willing to help you along,
When the days are so dreary and darkened and everything seems to go wrong.
And the actions and words that you utter, to others your colour unfold;
You need not have learning or riches to say a kind word or smile,
To help others out of their ditches, or perhaps help them over the stile,
None of us know just what's ahead, or what we'll need others to do,
So on your quiet moments, just ponder;
What kind of a flower are you? [1]
Endnotes
[1] Dorthy Thomson, Life's Garden, in Glad Tidings of the Kingdom of God (Solihull, England: 2010), #1514, p.15
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