I usually look up a word on Google first. This lets me know what people, at this exact moment in time, believe this word to mean. The definition of Beauty as defined by wikipedia is: a characteristic of a person, animal, place, object, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, meaning, or satisfaction. The next place i go is to my Blue Letter Bible App...
THEN I get out my King James Bible and I ask...
What does God think of this word? What does he find beautiful? What brings Him pleasure or satisfaction?
These are the verses that seemed to speak to answering these questions...
Ecclesiastes 3:11 He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.
He hath made EVERY THING beautiful. Did you catch that? Hath is the third person singular present tense of have. To have something is to be in possession of it. So, According to God's word, all things are beautiful in his time! God's time has no bound and what will be done has already been done in the infinite realm of God. We might not perceive it as beautiful now, but all things are made beautiful by God; the beauty of it be reveled in His time. So cool.
Romans 10:15 And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!
Amen! If you look at the context, what God is actually finding beautiful in this verse is the preaching of the gospel of peace! I can always KNOW I am in God's will, loving Him, and bringing honor to my position as ambassador when I am sharing with someone my peace, how the Gospel of God's grace in Jesus Christ saved me...and now I also know it to God, it is a thing of beauty.
Sharing the Gospel IS beautiful! How that while the world was dead in sin, Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay the price for that sin. He was buried, raised and it is through believing on Him that we can stand justified, reconciled, and redeemed before God in Christ! To those that are His, these are the most beautiful words they will ever hear and have the honor to tell someone else.
In Ezekiel 28:12 Satan is described as: "the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty."
Ezekiel 28:17 Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee.
Satan, who was perfect in beauty allowed the brightness of his beauty to corrupt his wisdom... and so he became a fool; exalting himself above the God who created Him. Beauty, when it does not shine forth from a thankful heart that reflects the light of it's source, can corrupt the wisdom of a man and darken his heart leaving him a fool with his vanity.
Proverbs 31:30 Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the LORD, she shall be praised.
Beauty IS vain when (like Satan's beauty) it is empty, darkened by corruption and focused on exalting self. When I am proud, rather than grateful or when I am puffed up with a high opinion of myself or my accomplishments, then I am conceited and my beauty is vain. It is only when my beauty is something for which I am thankful that it can be made FULL by being used to reflect light onto the truth of God. If, in pride, I begin to admire my own beauty, the brightness no longer reflects that light onto God, like Satan, it's brightness will blind me and corrupt my wisdom making it (in the big scheme of things) worthless, having no substance, value or importance. There is a beauty that is found in the corruptible but the beauty found in the incorruptible is the beauty of God himself!
Often with the word 'beauty' we use other words like - true, inner, or real. This suggests that beauty needs a qualifier to say..."HEY, there is something to me that is beyond your perceptions!" I think the reason we need and use these qualifiers is because we know that there is physical beauty and a beauty without form that is experienced rather than seen; a higher kind of beauty. Beauty that is found in truth.
When I told Brendan what I was blogging about last night he said that He always used to tell people and stills believes that it is our life's mission to perpetuate beauty. "Just be honest so that you provoke others to honesty. When you see beauty that is around you and give it more strength by recognizing it as the truth. It then can move forward." I loved how he immediately associated beauty and truth. Satan is beautiful, but he has no true beauty because he is "the father of lies" and has "no truth in him" (John 8:44). He looks good, but only on the outside. What comes to mind is a scene for the movie I'm Gonna Get You Sucka where Jake Slade is about to have relations with a "beautiful" women. Take a look at this scene that perfectly illustrates that what we perceive as beauty can be (under the surface) dark, empty, ugly and a lie. Very funny but adult in nature.
God's beauty is a beauty made whole through truth! The world's beauty is a empty beauty that is only able to appeal to the flesh. The beauty of God is complete...inside and out; a more excellent beauty that can appeal to the soul!
I work with my hands and mold the physical or an image of the physical for a living. The "beauty" industry is, just like every other industry, a battlefield. But I do not wrestle or fight my battles in the physical (trying to force the world to not be worldly), but rather I fright within the realm of the spiritual... using the bible and prayer (see Ephesians 6:12-20).
All my work has the potential to be either in vain or in truth. It is my intention a stylist (and a blogger) to bring God honor and glory with the work of my hands; letting His truth guide me in better revealing the beauty that he has placed in everyone. An ambassador for God's beauty...
All I can do is stay grounded in Christ, choose the more excellent way, and pray that the vain beauty of my work (and it's concentration on the physical) is made whole with Godly truth...for it is the only way to make it valuable.
God's way. Ain't it a beauty?
(Lov)e,
-k.
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