What Makes You Beautiful
When I was a little boy, I had a favorite stuffed animal named “Tiger.”
I know. Not incredibly creative. I could have named him “Tony,” after all I loved Frosted Flakes (still do actually) or “Tigger” after Winnie-the-Pooh’s friend, but nope I named him “Tiger” and it stuck. Tiger went with me everywhere. I loved that doll. Now, mind you, Tiger wasn’t the best-looking doll on the block. He wasn’t the biggest or the fluffiest. He was just two pieces of patterned cloth sewn together with synthetic fiber mashed inside. Did any of you have those kinds of dolls? Half of the stuffed animals I had came from a pattern at the local fabric store. Today they are much more sophisticated and intricate, but I’d still choose Tiger any day of the week because he was mine. As kids do, I gave him the same birthday as me. Even after I was “too old” for dolls, I’d still pull him out and wish him happy birthday and give him a big ol’ hug like the old days. I kept him, thinking one day I would pass Tiger on to my child, and when Emma was around three I did just that. That was a significant moment for me. To be able to pass down a treasured keepsake from my past to my daughter was so meaningful. The first time she slept with it felt so special. Side note: Want to hear something funny? At that point I had owned Tiger for over three decades, but when I handed it to Emma I discovered something. Tiger wasn’t a tiger at all. Tiger was a lion! It was the most orange lion you’d ever seen, but there was no mistaking it. Tiger wasn’t a tiger. The mane should have been a dead giveaway. I don’t know how that fact escaped me all those years, but there you go. I’d love to show Tiger to all of you so you could see for yourself, but someone else in our family liked Tiger, too. Our golden retriever, Luke who played with it as any big dog would. Tiger didn’t survive the experience. All that was left of him was a scrap of cloth. Cassie was so nice about it and was like, “Well, maybe you could keep the cloth.”
Tiger had a good life as far as stuffed animal go.
But to most people, he was just an ordinary doll. Not all that remarkable. If you put him in a pile with other stuffed animals, he probably wouldn’t have gone first. Or even twenty-first. But he was special to me. And I’d have picked him first every time. Whether he was a lion or not. I imagine God feels the same way about each and every one of us. No matter what kind of “worth” the world puts on us, no matter how the “world” would judge us, God sees beyond that and loves each and every one of us. We’d all get picked first. And isn’t that really all we want? To know we matter. And you DO matter. In fact, there is passage after passage in the Bible telling you that you matter. We will share some of those together today. We all probably know the most famous verse of this – John 3:16. 16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. That God was willing to give up the life of his son for us, that God was willing to die a mortal death so that we would come to believe in him is a striking example of just how much God loves us. How often would we give up OUR lives for those we didn’t love? From John 15:12-17 – 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other. There is no greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. Which is exactly what God has done for us. And I love another part of this verse. “You did not choose me, but I chose you…” God loved us first. God took the first step. We didn’t do anything to merit God’s love or earn God’s love, but instead God chose us – to create us, to love us, to be there for us. God chose. We didn’t make God love us. God loved us first. Which is exactly what John wrote in his first letter to the church. From 1 John 4: 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister. You didn’t earn God’s love. God gave it freely. God wants you and God loves you for no other reason than God DOES! And even if you reject God, God is still waiting for you. To me, that is probably the most powerful evidence of God’s love – his eternal patience with us. As it says in 2 Peter: 8 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. If you didn’t matter to God, why would he wait?
God IS love!
The Bible doesn’t give us straight answers about a lot of things – the Internet, space travel, invitro fertilization. But about this it is very clear. God is love. It tells us in many ways, but in 1 John 4 it says it specifically in verse 16. God is love. We only know what love is because it is a part of who God is. God is the living embodiment of love. Our ability to love; our ability to be loved; all of it is a gift of God. And God chooses to share it with us. God knows we are flawed, that we drift away, that we make poor choices from time to time (and sometimes more than that), but God waits because God loves. I had a friend who once thought she wasn’t good enough to be loved by God. That she had done too many things wrong in life to be forgiven, but nothing could be further from the truth. God’s love and grace and mercy is endless. As it says in Romans 8:38-39: 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[b] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
There is only one thing God asks of us.
To love one another. It’s in my favorite verse of the Bible. John 13:34-35:34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Love one another. It’s Jesus last command before he dies on the cross. And by the way, it isn’t conditional. If you don’t do this doesn’t mean God will stop loving you. It’s just that God wants us to show the same kind of love he has given us to other people and that way more people will come to know God’s love for themselves. Don’t hoard it all to yourself. God’s love is like the bottomless fries at Red Robin; there is no end. The best way to honor Christ, to give meaning to his sacrifice, is to love one another as Christ loved us. This week, go out into the world and do something to make this a better place to live. Show the love of Christ to someone without any hope or expectation of getting something in return because let’s face it, you’ve already been given the greatest gift in the world – the love of God. Be the incarnation of Christ to someone who needs it. Send a card to an old friend. Pick up the phone and call your mom or your dad or your sister you haven’t talked to in a while. Connect with someone online you haven’t seen in a while or just give a random compliment to a stranger. Pay for a cup of coffee for the guy behind you at Starbucks or McDonald’s. Think of something creative to show the love of Christ for those around you. Here’s a good one. Compliment a stranger on how they look. Don’t make it creepy. Say something nice about their shoes or their hat or the design on their shirt. Studies show that it makes people feel better than we expect, but also makes us feel good in the process.[1] Doing good feels good. For everybody.
I love the song “What Makes You Beautiful” by One Direction.
It’s all about a guy telling a girl she’s more beautiful than she realizes. And I think most of us feel like that from time to time; that maybe we aren’t as beautiful as we’d like to be or as we once were or as we could be. Maybe it’s what’s inside that feels ugly or unworthy. But let me tell you that you underestimate yourself. God loves you and believes in you. He sees the true beauty within, even when we don’t see it ourselves. If he didn’t why would he wait for you? Why would he love you unconditionally? Especially when we so often are ungrateful and ignore him in our busy lives. But his love is truly everlasting. We should take heart and be encouraged by God’s great love and know we are wanted and valued. My stuffed animal Tiger may not have been much to look at, but he was everything to me. God feels the same about you. Regardless of what you think you look like or if you think you’re worth it, have confidence that you are the most beautiful and most desirable being inside and out to God. Let that knowledge fill you with the confidence you need to share God’s love with those around you.
[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evidence-based-living/202109/the-psychology-compliments-nice-word-goes-long-way
Craig's Corner 