Speaking of Beauty
Why is it that when we talk about beauty we immediately think about the way a woman looks? I’ve heard it said multiple times that the kingdom of heaven is true beauty, and we know that’s so much bigger than what a woman looks like on the outside.
Think about Mother Teresa. She’s one of the most beautiful women in history, and yet when she passed, she was frail and wrinkled and worn. Her beauty came from a life of service, dedicated to the person always in front of her.
Or, as we stand on a mountaintop, a garden, or along a babbling brook, we recognize in nature, the signature of God’s hand in the beauty of what he created.
Women express beauty in their smile, the way that they’re able to make eye contact— to recognize and sit in the presence of another. In fact, Pope Saint John Paul the Great said that beauty was one of the attributes of the feminine genius.
The epitome of beauty for us, this side of heaven, is to strive to be pure of heart. To align our will with God‘s will and to let that radiate through from heart, and most being, to our outer self. This should manifest itself in the words we speak, and in the way we speak to others, in the clothes that we wear that represent our “aesthetic.” It should come across in each and every day, in the little ways that we decide intentionally to live for God in his kingdom. The problem is a lot of us don’t live intentionally, instead we’re running from thing to thing, we find ourselves in chaos mode most of the time.
So my suggestion for you today is to stop, breathe, and ask yourself: What’s the next best thing I can do right now? Maybe it’s the next best thing for your own personal growth, your family, your job, the random stranger that’s in the aisle next to you at the grocery store. What’s your next best thing? When you find yourself feeling overwhelmed with the anxiety and chaos surrounding you, see if this helps. See if it re-centers you and helps you recognize that God is constantly speaking life into your heart, wanting order and peace and beauty for your day.
