Beauty
Have you ever looked in the mirror and been discouraged by what you saw? Perhaps you believe your skin is not tanned enough or your face not shaped well enough for you to feel good-looking. You may have determined often to improve your looks but have never succeeded. Can you attain and maintain beauty? You surely can.
In order to attain anything, including beauty, we must go to its source. The origin of beauty is made clear in the Bible where one of the Psalms states, "Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us." n1 Beauty comes from God, not from the body.
n1 Psalms 90:17.
Since beauty is an attribute of God, it is not a material property. It is not tanned skin or particular facial characteristics. God is spirit, as Christ Jesus declares, so Spirit's attributes, including beauty, are spiritual.
Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, reinforces this deduction from the Bible texts. She states in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:m "Comeliness and grace are independent of matter. Being possesses its qualities before they are perceived humanly. Beauty is a thing of life, which dwells forever in the eternal Mind and reflects the charms of His goodness in expression, form, outline, and color." n2 Beauty is a spiritual quality that we all can express.
n2 Science and Health,m p. 247.
How do we attain this spiritual beauty from its God-source? Fortunately, it is not something we have to try desperately to grasp at. We do not need to struggle to merit a gift of beauty, nor need we compete with others to attain it , because we are made in God's likeness. The Scriptures declare this in Genesis: "For in the image of God made he man." n3 Our true character as the likeness of our creator must include every attribute of that creator. God is Spirit, so we are spiritual. Spirit's nature includes beauty, so ours does, too. Other appearances are illusions.
n3 Genesis 9:6.
I have often needed to assert this fact and restore my sense of beauty. Too often I have been lured into evaluating my attractiveness and even my worth by what has appeared in the mirror. When that has occurred I have worried that I do not measure up to the current popular ideal of beauty and even have become depressed. I have grown certain that I am ugly and worthless. I have completed my self-degradation in these times by determining that the body constitutes my identity.
What a relief to remember these beliefs are wrong!Those "mirror" appearances err. A material body does not constitute man, because God, Spirit, is not material, and we are His likeness. Furthermore, our beauty is established in Spirit, and it is maintained there. I have gained renewed conviction of my God-given beauty and worth by accepting these ideas. Depression and self-depreciation have disappeared, and I have been able to live life with confidence and joy.
As we all discipline ourselves to accept and understand these facts, our divine beauty becomes obvious. The charms of God's goodness that are expressed in all mankind appear. Then those moments in front of the mirror become moments of rejoicing over God's spiritual beauty expressed in all his creation, and we can say with certainty that "the beauty of the Lord our God's is now upon us. DAILY BIBLE VERSE The Lord hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth, when thou wast refused, saith thy god. . . . For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed. Isaiah 54:6,10
