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While we might not like to admit it, we do make judgements about people, based on how they look.
Even children learn that at an early age. They get approval for “looking nice,” “growing so tall,” etc. On the other hand, they might get teased or even bullied for looking a little different from the average.
By the teen years, many of them are really focused on how they look. And that focus carries into adulthood.
Dressing up or down, having different hair styles, wearing makeup or jewelry, even getting tattoos or body piercings are all ways people try to express who they are through their bodies.
But the danger comes when we start to believe we can recreate ourselves apart from how God created us.
The danger comes when we try to use our body as a defensive wall to keep everyone from knowing the person we really are inside.
The danger comes when we start to believe the outside of our body is more important than the inside.
Not only do we start to believe that about ourselves, we start to believe it about other people too. We decide who they are by what we see on their outside instead of learning more about who they really are.
What would we have thought about Jesus? All the imagined pictures make Him look quite attractive. But Isaiah describes him this way,
He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.
Isaiah 53:2
So we might not have noticed Jesus or if we did, we might have thought He did not look like anyone we would even be interested in getting to know.
But, as we know, there was so much more to Jesus than His physical Body.
I find that comforting. As age and health issues have changed my outer body over the last year, people have noticed. I no longer look like the woman in pictures from even a couple of years ago.
I have tried to comfort myself and others by saying, “I know I don’t look so good on the outside, but I am still me on the inside!”
And then I hear God say, “You are more than just you. You are Me on the inside!”
The reason we remember Jesus is because His Father God shone through His physical Body.
We don’t even remember Jesus as Isaiah described Him. We are so attracted to Jesus that we want to see even more of Him.
Jesus said with confidence,
“If you have seen Me, you have seen The Father!”
John 14:9
So who do people see when they see you? Do they see the image you made up? Do they only see the image time and circumstances brought about? Or do they see The One in Whose Image you are created?
Who do you see when you look in the mirror? Keep looking until you can see what Paul saw when he wrote,
But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass The Glory of The Lord, are changed into The Same Image from glory to glory, even as by The Spirit of The Lord.
2 Corinthians 3:18
