I never thought about this before. We so often talk about beauty because we live in a world where human beings are consumed with self-image. Women go to crazy lengths to look beautiful. We have ingrained in us this "fairy-tale" idea that Prince Charming will only fall in love with us if we are beautiful. And yet our Heavenly Bridegroom loved us by suffering for us so that we would be made beautiful. We did not capture His eye because we were something special! I'll let the commentary continue...
“As
we suffer loss, and as He pries our fingers off the idols to which they are so
desperately attached, then our hearts are prepared more and more to be with
Christ, and to see in Him our only good in this world… What a husband we are
being prepared for! Christ is no despot in the mold of Ahasuerus, eager to use
us and dispose of us, like so many discarded toys…
But our husband is Jesus
Christ, who has loved His bride, the church, with an everlasting love. For our
sake, He took on a form utterly without beauty, was despised and rejected by
those He came to save, was cut off from the land of the living. In contrast to
Esther’s twelve-month-long course of beauty treatments, our divine husband
undertook a thirty-three-year pilgrimage, stripped of His eternal radiance. No
comfortable beds and fattening food for Him, nowhere to lay His head and
nothing to call His own. His pain was the prerequisite for our beauty….
What
motivated Jesus in His pursuit of us? Certainly not our radiant beauty and
sweet spirit! …
Yet we are all too reluctant to give ourselves to Him and to
submit to whatever beautifying sufferings and disciplines He would have us
undergo. Our hearts are quick to grumble about the course His providence has
charted for us. We are so slow to prepare to meet with Him day by day and spend
time in His presence along the way. We are so reluctant to fix our eyes on the
heavenly banquet He has prepared. Yet what on earth could be sweeter than that
heavenly meal?”
Oh to love Christ more!
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