You Are Beautiful

How often do you think about you and your life?  Dale Carnegie in his book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” says we spend about 95 percent of our time thinking about ourselves.  In all of that spent mental energy, you have probably considered your failures more than a few times.  If you are like me, you want life to be perfect and you hate the blemishes that you see.  This may leave you wondering about life and where you are going.

Perfection

A person’s goal is usually to seek perfection about themselves.  There isn’t a soul alive that likes failure.  This goes back to Adam and Eve.  When confronted by God about their choices, Adam blamed his wife, Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent.  No one wants to be told they are at fault.  Often, if you call out a person’s failure, that person will flat out lie to protect themselves.

Our failures can weigh us down in the secret person of our heart.  You try to hide them because you have been told those failures are ugly.  If you hear your faults enough, they can make you feel ugly on the inside.  You dwell on what you think is ugly and begin to believe it.  The weight of blame can be crippling.  Dwelling too long on your mistakes will eventually rob you of your peace and can attack your mental health.

Let’s say for a moment that you are perfect.  You are able to bridle your tongue and always say the right thing.  You always return what you borrow.  Your work is perfect and never needs improving.  In fact, you never make a mistake.  I think we can all say this is not realistic, but if it could be true, how boring!  Sure, it would be nice for all of us to live together in peace and harmony.  As a society, we need peace and harmony.  As an individual on a daily basis though, perfection is rather anticlimactic.  Let me show you why.

Imperfection

There will always be failures, mistakes, accidents and general wrong choices in your life, but the beauty of those circumstances is that they are what tell your story.  If you are perfect, what is there left to say about you?  Can you imagine the conversation?

“Did you hear about the guy who is perfect?”

“No, tell me about him.”

“I just did.”

Really, what else is there to say?

I remodeled a 100-year-old house.  In all of my work on the home, the problems of the modifications are what I share most with others.  I rarely talk about the finished home.  If you walked through my home after it was done, I would tell you about the blocking in the eaves that wasn’t nailed and how a bird was nesting on the insulation above the kitchen addition.  I would tell you that the original home wasn’t insulated.  Then we could discuss the wiring and how the old wire was spliced into the new wire improperly.

If you have a home that is perfect, you can be happy in that home but what is its story?  Don’t you talk more about the failures and how you overcame those failures to get your home to where it is now?  It is like that with you.  The mistakes you make are what paint the story of your life, not because they take you down, but by how you overcome them.  These are the shades of grey, blue, red, green, yellow and black that paint the picture of your journey.

Your Story

What good story doesn’t have adversity?  Aren’t we moved when adversity is overcome?  So too is God moved as you overcome adversity.  For proof, just look at the people in the Bible.  A few examples are Joseph, who was made a slave, Moses murdered a man, Elijah was afraid, and Peter denied the living God.  Your failures and how you overcome them are the story that God sees.  That is what He talks about.  Have you never rooted for the underdog?  How many stories are there of someone coming from behind to finish well?

Did you know that God is a Master Craftsman?  You are the work of His hands.  Your life is a tapestry that hangs in the greatest hall in the universe.  It is the Great Hall of Heaven.  Are you aware of the stains in your own tapestry?  He makes those imperfections part of the tapestry.  You may not see the beauty because you are looking at the back side of that tapestry.  God sees the beauty because He is looking at the finished work on the front of the tapestry as He works on it and you.  Your tapestry is eternal proof that you have overcome and that you are an overcomer.

You don’t have to be perfect.  You may make poor choices in this life.  We all do.  But it’s not about the poor choices you make.  It is about overcoming those choices and learning to make better choices.  It is about reaching the finish line.  Maybe you have a poor running form and won’t come in first.  In the race to eternity, it doesn’t matter who’s first.  It matters that you make it.  Jesus Christ is waiting at the finish line.  He wants to tell you personally, “Well done!”.

Imagine Jesus speaking with you.  He would say:  It doesn’t matter how dirty you’ve been, where you have wandered or how bad your language is.  I don’t care that you have turned from Me your whole life.  Have you met the thief on the cross?  Can you tell which one believed in Me?  I do care, that no matter what, you will spend the rest of Eternity with Me.  I created Eternity for you.  I made a year for every moment you have suffered, a year for every abuse, a year for every tear you have cried.  Until you have forgotten the reason for your tears and the painful years you have endured.  Forget what is behind you.    Look at Me.  I see the child that you were created you to be.