Beauty

A girl was so violently jealous of her sister that she was taken to see a minister well-known for his spiritual counsel. It was hoped that he would be able to help her. To him, she raved against her sister, telling how popular her sister was, how her sister outshone her, and how unhappy she herself was as a result.

The minister decided he should meet the younger sister. He expected to see a beautiful girl and was surprised to find she was plain but had a friendly spirit and inner beauty of character.

True beauty is not skin deep as the old saying goes. Rather, it is beneath the skin. Washington Irving realized, "It is the divinity within that makes the divinity without."

Sheer physical good looks do not necessarily go together with excelling character or outstanding achievement. Our most handsome presidents were perhaps Warren G. Harding, James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, and Chester A. Arthur. None of these are rated by historians as among our top national leaders. The presidents most praised by historians were not handsome men. George Washington was pock-marked. Abraham Lincoln's rugged features are well-known and Theodore Roosevelt was bristling in appearance. Parents will do well to mention these things, because many children worry about their looks.

Beauty is something which every girl can have. A young girl was praised for her beauty. Privately her father told her, "People are not praising your beauty, but your youth. You can take no credit at all for beauty at sixteen. But if you are beautiful at sixty, you can be proud of it, for it will be the beauty of your character which has made you beautiful."

True beauty shows when the face is in repose. The natural expression reflects the character. It may be fretty, quarrelsome, or reveal a spirit at rest in God. Another time that true beauty may be seen is when you greet someone. If you are self-centered, your greeting is without feeling and does not light your face. But if you are genuinely friendly, your greeting of others will bring a radiance to your face.

A Quaker woman's recipe for beauty was:

"Use for the lips, truth ... for the voice, prayer ... for the eyes, pity ... for the hands, charity ... for the figure, uprightness ... and for the heart, love."

Robert McCheyne was a saintly man of God, who, in his comparatively short life, won many souls to the Lord. After he died, a letter addressed to him was found on his desk. It was from a person he had led to Christ and said, "It was nothing you said that first made me wish to be a Christian. It was the beauty of holiness which I saw in your face."
 

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Taken from God in My Kitchen © 1958 Warner Press, Inc. (Anderson, Indiana). Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Photo by Sanja Gyarmathy.