Beautiful

I am beautiful

Have you ever looked in a mirror and repeated those words?

My guess is if you are like me, the answer would be No.

Last night I helped chaperone a Lock-In at our church.  (What is a Lock –In you ask?  It’s a big slumber party …with very little sleep.  Big emphasis on the word VERY!)

I started our evening girl’s devotion with this question…”How many of you feel beautiful?”  I was surprised by how few of the beautiful girls in the room raised their hands.  You see I think these girls are very beautiful and would love to have their bodies, their hair, their athleticism, their fashion sense or heck even their agility!  I am telling you we have amazingly talented girls in our group!  I asked everyone in the room to participate in the question and was surprised to discover it didn’t matter our age, we all were reluctant or even refused to admit to how beautiful we were, present company included.

You see we were judging beauty by our outward appearance not our inner beauty.   God made each of us beautiful in his eyes and wouldn’t want us to be any other way.  

“But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”     1 Samuel 16:7

Read that verse again … “but the LORD looks at the heart.”   Think about that…God doesn’t care what we look like on the outside he looks at our heart.  That’s what makes us beautiful.

After a very deep thoughtful discussion about being beautiful I issued the girls, present company included a challenge…well two challenges actually.  

Challenge #1

To not wear makeup or do their hair the entire day. 

(They were allowed to comb their hair!)

Challenge #2

Every day for a week look in the mirror as soon as they get up, before makeup and say, 

“I am beautiful.”

Now you may think that wouldn’t be hard to do today as we were at a Lock-in and we would be leaving after waking up.  But what I didn’t tell you was our Lock-in didn’t end until 2:30 this afternoon.  We spent the day cleaning the church.   (I washed windows and don’t want to see window cleaner anytime soon!)  So you see the girls would be working beside the guys in our group as well. 

I am very proud to say everyone met challenge #1 and with some coaxing everyone met challenge #2.

And an amazing thing happened this morning.   As everyone came into the sanctuary this morning for morning devotions, one of the guys turned to one of the girls and said, “Good Morning Beautiful.”  Three words that made her day!!!!    Awww…I love these guys!

And I have to say our work will be well received tomorrow morning when the congregation walks into a sparkling clean sanctuary free of cobwebs and dust bunnies. 

I am proud of the girls for accepting and conquering the challenge today.  

So now I am asking you my reading audience:

Are you beautiful?

Are you willing to take the challenge?

I took the challenge and here’s my picture to prove it.  Thank you Shay for capturing my inner beauty.

God,
 thank you for making me just the way you did…

I AM BEAUTIFUL

"You make beautiful things,
You make beautiful things out of dust.
You make beautiful things,
You make beautiful things out of us"

-Gungor

Thanks for stopping by...as always, I'd love to hear your comments!
Much love to all, 
~W~