They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Yet the longer I live, the more I learn the truth of what Helen Keller said, "The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched; they must be felt with the heart". I count as beautiful the way my husband used to call me "Ling"; it's a common enough shortened 'pet' term of endearment for darling, but what made it beautiful was the way he used it in a tone only he could use it. Beautiful is reading the Bible and getting hit with another new (tho often painful) way of looking at myself, at life and at God. A beautiful moment happened when the gardener came round at my request even though it was still drizzling slightly, not just to cut the grass but to leave me a bunch of rambutans - a totally unexpected gift from a foreigner who uses a bicycle and a portable grass-cutter to eke out a living.
Beautiful is this story told by a 'druggie' just released from prison, of a day he never forgot as he was standing at the edge of a building ready to kill himself. In desperation and anger, he started railing at God and daring Him to send rain if He really cared about his miserable life. And God answered 3x - first there was the rumble of thunder, despite it being a very hot, very bright day. The man wasn't satisfied, he told God he had asked for rain - 1 drop of water plopped onto his arm. But he still wasn't satisfied; he had the gumption to shake his fist at heaven and tell God (again) it must be 'real' rain or nothing else. Suddenly the sky grew dark, and as clouds obliterated the sun, the rain fell - huge heavy drops that drove him back off from the edge and finally accept there is a God who loves him, who is giving him a second chance. Beautiful also is watching an ex-drug addict hold an umbrella over an old uncle limping on his walker into the street alley in a thunderstorm.
But as much as there is beautiful, there is also ugly; like Beauty and the beast. Ugly is the yucky cockroach running across the kitchen floor, it is the stinky rubbish dump I have to pass every Saturday to get to the street alley where we feed the homeless, poor and marginalized, folks whom "normal" society deems ugly because...they have weird tattoos on their arms and sores on their bodies, they blow smoke and cough probably contagious germs into your face , they smell of alcohol, they are obviously lazy, good-for-nothing 'rejects' of society who don't deserve any charity or sympathy really. Ugly is the practice and condoning of evil, injustice, corruption, hypocrisy, racism and all things repugnant to equality, righteousness and truth.
But there are more insidous forms of ugly.... It is being blind to the fact that mankind's worst enemy can be the face staring at us in the mirror every morning. Ugly is mistaking religion for a relationship with Jesus. Ugly is using, mis-using and abusing God instead of worshipping Him. Ugly is the deception that says man can live without accounting to his Maker. Ugly is the sin that keeps us from experiencing the fullness of life we were all created to enjoy forever. Ugly is the eternal death that separates man from God.
Which is why Jesus Christ who came to bring reconciliation between man and man and man and God is called Beautiful Savior. Yet contrary to popular portrayals of Jesus on book-covers and in films, He isn't that stoically broodingly handsome young man, with long flowing hair, blue eyes and winsome smile, serenely clutching a little lamb with a shepherd's staff in hand. Actually "He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces He was despised, and we held Him in low esteem" (Isaiah 53:1-2)..Wait a minute, that's ugly, not beautiful.
I am sure Jesus didn't look beautiful when He got so angry He drove out business-minded merchants who were making God's house "a den of robbers". He could have cooked all those religious crooks with a zap of lightning, but He didn't, He used a whip fashioned out of His own human hands. How could Jesus be beautiful after fasting 40 days and nites without water and food in the desert? He could have turned stones into bread for Himself; He didn't, but He did it for some 15000 people over 2 occassions. What beauty is there in an exhausted Jesus, collapsed sleeping in a storm-tossed boat, so worn-out with healing the sick, exorcising demons, raising the dead and performing miracles as if it was His daily occupation (which it was for 3 years), traipsing all over villages and towns on foot? He could have grown wings, but He chose to walk on 2 human feet. There is no beauty in a sweating Jesus, agonizing in solitary prayer; His "soul..overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death." He could have commanded legions of angels to His rescue but He struggled alone whilst His disciples slept. Surely there is nothing beautiful about a naked man, wild-eyed and bleeding, the flesh on His back torn and hanging in strips after 39 lashes, stumbling to carry a 200 lb cross up a hill. We are so used to the idea of a 'sanitized', serene, saintly Jesus with a halo round His head . Yet in reality, He got hungry, weary and angry (tho always only at the right things). He celebrated weddings, wept at funerals. As human as human can be, with 1 crucial distinction that sets Him apart as truly beautiful; as the "one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are - yet He did not sin (Hebrews 4:16), for "in Him was no sin" (1 John 3:5)
Still, surely it's a misnomer to call Him Savior? What a joke - He wants to save the world when He can't even save Himself. The challenge thrown at Jesus 2000 years ago as He hung dying, suspended between heaven and earth, "Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him" (Matthew 27:42) is still being shouted out today in similar terms - Let God prove, do, show (whatever).....then I will believe. Yet, even if God did whatever we wanted Him to do, actually in truth, some of us would still never be satisfied with God enough to believe. It's just like the ex-con who shared the story above, here is a guy who has experienced the very visible intervention of God - an exact answer to an exact demand at precisely the exact moment - but today he is still not sure about committing to the God who loves him. When I asked him why, he shrugged his shoulders and said, "I know I should, aunty, but I can't, maybe I am afraid...maybe I still can't let go of myself" At least this man's honest and knows he really has no excuse. He recognizes believing starts with letting go of 'my' self, 'my' perception, assumption and presumption of who/what I think God is or should be or must do, and allowing Him to work in my life, His way His time. When I did that 11 years ago, I discovered some marvelous truths...
..That the ugliest thing -death - was meted out on the cross of Calvary, when Jesus, the perfect Love, was crucified. But the good news is that He who was crowned with thorns now bestows upon every believer "a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair" (Isaiah 61:3). And the most beautiful thing was an empty tomb, for death couldn't hold Jesus down, the resurrected Christ is God's beautiful plan for mankind's salvation, making Him indeed the most Beautiful - perfect Man, perfect God - a different kind of beautiful.
I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For He has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of His righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. (Isaiah 61:10)
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