Livin Lively

By Peggy Lively

            Three weeks ago, we celebrated my twelve year old son’s birthday with several of his friends at our house. They were having a great time playing badmitten, basketball and ping pong until…

            My husband and I challenged the boys to play us two on two in basketball. After we won about five games, I think they began to realize that these old people weren’t too bad after all. On the sixth game, I was guarding one of my son’s friends when he swung his head around quickly and forcefully landing it right in the middle of my nose. My husband and I both heard it crack and one look in the mirror told me it was broken.

            Fortunately, this happened at the end of the party so parents were already coming to pick up their children. My husband took me to the ER as I buried my nose and face in an ice pack. I was so worried about what my nose would look like, having surgery to fix it, or it just being crooked forever. As we entered the ER, I kept my nose covered with the ice embarrassed for anyone else to see it.

            Thankfully, we hadn’t waited long when the receptionist called me back to the triage area. As the hospital staff took my vital signs, they asked me what happened, and I told them. The man that was a physician’s assistant said they would take me back to get some x-rays even though we already knew my nose was broken since it was “visually deformed.” Let me just say, those are two words that no woman wants said about anything on her face. So as I sat and waited to be taken to x-ray, those words just kept playing over and over in my mind. And I wondered if my “visually deformed” was fixable.

            After I went to x-ray and was on the way back to my room, I passed someone on the other side of the hall. The best way I can describe the way he looked is frightening. He was very pale and had white, disheveled hair. The bottom lids of his eyes were red as if he had not slept in a long time, and on his right arm was an artificial limb with a metal hook on the end of it. And I noticed that he was wearing scrubs. At first glance, I was taken aback by his appearance, and then my next thought was, “Surely he doesn’t work here. He will scare the patients.” But as soon as I had thought this, the Lord brought to my mind, “Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.” (I Samuel 16:7) Then all of a sudden, my nose didn’t seem so important anymore.

            This experience brought me to the Bible and what it says about beauty in the eyes of God. It says, “Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands…” (I Peter 3:1-5)

            There are three things I found in this passage that I call “inner beauty tips.” First, the passage of scripture begins and ends instructing wives to be submissive to their husbands. I have to admit that when I think of beauty (physical or spiritual), “being submissive” is not what comes to my mind. But the Bible says that this is one of the ways the holy women of the past made themselves beautiful.

            Second, these verses say that beauty comes from a gentle and quiet spirit. Physical beauty is going to fade, but the Bible says that a gentle and quiet spirit has unfading beauty and is “of great worth in God’s sight.” We tend to put our worth in our works or our good deeds for God. But it is a gentle and quiet spirit that has great worth in His sight.

            Third, the holy women of the past made themselves beautiful when they “put their hope in God.” We are instructed to submit to our husbands, but we cannot put our hope in them. They are human and will let us down. We cannot put our hope in physical beauty, because eventually it will fade. And we cannot put our hope in our good deeds because they will never be good enough.

            Our hope in God is the only hope that will never disappoint. “Then you will know that I am the LORD; those who hope in me will not be disappointed.” (Isaiah 49:23) “And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” (Romans 5:5)

            So it is possible to have unfading beauty. It just looks a lot different than what the world tells us.