What makes a body beautiful.

After reading my last post, my beautiful, creative friend Linda in Chattanooga sent me a link to this article that I wanted to share with you.   The article says that real beauty is "a soul alive with love and transformed by grace," and that's what drew people to Mother Teresa, a woman who didn't even remotely resemble "model standards" of beauty but who was one of the most beautiful people you could ever see.

Remember when rumors started to fly about whether Mother Teresa's faith was authentic or not, and people began to criticize her?

I love how Anne Lamott says in her book, Help Thanks Wow, "Is it okay yet to love and admire Mother Teresa again?  Can we forget her detractors for long enough to remember that most mornings she was out there on the streets of Calcutta cleaning some person's butt the day before he died, without telling anyone about it?"

It's what Jesus would have done.  I'm sure if any of us had seen Jesus face-to-face we wouldn't have been able to take our eyes off of Him for the beauty that He posessed.  Yet Scriptures say there was nothing really attractive about His physical appearance.

The article goes on...

"[The body] makes visible the truths of our invisible soul, and it makes visible the truths about our invisible God. It communicates who we are to the world as it images the Creator of that world. What makes it beautiful is how well it does that, how perfectly it images the God who formed it."

In my study of the book Captivating by Stasi Eldredge years ago, I remember one phrase that struck me so hard: "What if you have a genuine and captivating beauty that is marred only by your striving?"  Because in the midst of striving, we lose that confidence that comes only through security in the Lord.  Complaining about being unattractive just shows ugliness and discontentment in our spirit, which surely reflects on the outside.

Now, back to twirling with my daughter who has been wearing the same "ballerina" dress for 3 days and has asked me several times a day if she looks beautiful.  It's inside every woman to want to be beautiful - may we all find, though, that the origination of our beauty is internal because of how we are being changed and transformed by grace and love.