Living Among Perfection

 Who are you?  No, really, who are you?  Look in the mirror -- what do you see?  Do you list every horrible thing about your body to yourself whenever you take a look in that condescending piece of glass?  If you look in the mirror and had to make two lists, the good and the bad, which one would over-rule the other?


 To answer the first question in this post, you are royalty!  Can you believe it?  Well, you better, because it is 100% true!  You are a precious and cherish child of the King of Kings -- the King Jesus Christ!  Why don't we treat ourselves like royalty?


 The better question is how do we live like royalty?  Our culture is constantly screaming, "Perfection!", even though we all know that nobody is really perfect.  We don't need the world to tell us how to look, act, or feel.  When you change your hair to brown, your attitude to flirty, and your feelings to neutral, will they accept you, then?  No, by the time you change yourself, that style will be "so yesterday" and there will be something new, bigger, and better.


 Bigger?  Better?  I don't think so!  These days are filled with being bigger and better than who we really are.  It’s so easy to be dissatisfied with ourselves because there are ways to change it!  If you don’t like your eye color, you can get different colored eye contacts to change it.  You can color your hair – I've done that before!  Because I wasn't satisfied with the color I was made with (blonde).  You can pluck your eyebrows so that they’re a different shape.  And you can have surgery to make your lips, and nose bigger or smaller.  


 Psalm 139:14 says, "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.".  That is something we often forget to do: praise God.  In fact, we not only forget to praise Him, we forget that we were made wonderfully!  It just goes in one ear and out the other.  


 You know where our self-worth most often comes from?  Media.  A lot of time, we all feel like we aren't worth anything.  We don’t have what it takes to live in this world.  We aren't as skinny as those girls on the magazine covers.  We can’t afford enough makeup to look like the girls on the posters on our walls.  We don’t have enough coordination to do our hair like the people on TV.  But, you know what?  They’re fake – completely fake.  Something would have had to be done to be that perfect.  Most likely, its photo shopped.  Just a little bit this way or that. 


 Matthew 10:29-31 reads, "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?  Yet not one will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father.  And even the very hairs on your head are all numbered.  So don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows."  If God won't let a sparrow fall to the ground, do you think He's going to let us go?!?!  


 Just remember one thing: it's not the outside that matters.  It's the inside.  My family has a blanket.  It's super old and a bit ragged (it's made from my great-grandma's dresses), so it's not really beautiful.  But...it is the warmest blanket in the house and we often argue who gets to have it covering their bed during winter.  It's not the outside that attracts us, it's the warmth and the other blessings it brings to others.  


 No matter who you are, no matter how many outward "flaws" you think you have, God loves you and believes that you are beautiful.  Because you are His child.


 "If nothing seems to go my way today, this is my happiness: God is my Father, and I am His child."   ~Basilea Schlink


God bless,
   Sierra