Clipped and Primped

Consider this story:

A woman was planting a tree.  She took a lovely ceramic pot and filled it full of hair clips and scrunchies, nail polish bottles, and lip gloss.   She took the tree and spread out its roots and planted it in the pot of beauty products watered it thoroughly and set it in the sunny windowsill.  A few days later the tree looked wilted so she watered it again and left it there to grow.   After a while the tree withered and died.  She couldn’t figure out how a tree that looked so good could die like that.

Everywhere we look in the world around us, these days, we find something or someone telling us how we can improve our appearance.  They tell us what we need to fix about ourselves and what we need to buy to help us make friends and fit in with everyone else.  Advertising tells us what tech toys and apps to buy so we can stay in touch with everyone.  Beauty ads tell us what makeup to buy to look flawless or what medicine to buy to rid ourselves of blemishes. Clothes stores show us all the latest fashions to be trendy and look good.  Magazines show us pictures of the hottest stars and what they are wearing and how they live. They also show us how to diet, and give us tips on sex. TV ads tell us what stuff to use to keep from getting wrinkles and sagging skin or hair coloring to buy to get rid of gray hair.  All around us are people with ideas about how we need to look and act. 

If we are not careful, we can get caught up in this constant focus on our outer beauty.  Is it wrong to look nice? Certainly not.  But what about when we plant ourselves deeply in what the world tells us we need to be beautiful?  When we race from the hair salon, to the nail salon, to the jewelry shop, to the clothes shop, grab a coffee from the drive up to then hit the tanning salon and a quick stop by the shoe store to see what’s new before heading home to work out on the treadmill and eat a low calorie dinner so we can fit into our swimwear this summer.   While working out we text our friends about the cute tops we saw in the store and the newest flip flops we just have to have and on and on about what we think we need to be beautiful.  What we need to make us happy but it’s a never ending cycle of stuff.

We all want to feel beautiful.  To feel loved.  To feel we fit in.  But if we plant ourselves in the outward beauty of vanity, we will wither and die not producing fruit in our lives. When we root ourselves in vanity, we are telling God that the way He made us isn’t good enough and that what He wants is not what we want. Instead of producing the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23, we want the fruit of flirting in a bar with a hot date,  the joy of the new aroma of the latest perfume or aftershave, peaceful relaxing in the spa,  patiently waiting for the girl to finish our manicure, kindly giving a good tip to the hairdresser because we like our trendy haircut,  talking about all the good buys we found at the  mall, being loyal to our favorite latte, gently tweezing our eyebrows, and resisting temptation by buying only two colors of those shoes instead of all four colors.  We are telling God that we need to do stuff to ourselves to be accepted and that we need to be accepted by others who rely on how we look to decide if they want to be our friends.  He wants us to see that He loves us no matter what we look like.  No matter how we act.  He looks at your heart.  Somehow I think we don’t believe God means it when He says it.

Perhaps you do all this stuff to yourself because you don’t like yourself.  You don’t like who you are.  You don’t see yourself as someone that matters to God.  He made you. In Psalm 139:14 He says you are” fearfully and wonderfully made”.  This doesn’t mean you are frightful! (though you might be with curlers in your hair!)  You are reverently and carefully and beautifully made just the way you are.  You have a purpose and a plan.  If you go changing yourself to some image you have or the world has in mind, then you don’t fulfill that plan or purpose the way He intended.

You are important and beautiful to Him.    Let that matter most in your life.  Spend time in His word.  Let Him show you how beautiful you are to him as you bask in how wonderful and awesome He is. You don’t need nail polish, hair clips and all that primping to be a beautiful person.  Enjoy looking nice, but don’t get so wrapped up in it that you can’t live without it.  Don’t settle for this lesser beauty.  Let your true beauty come out in a relationship with the Master Gardener.   Let Him uproot you from your indulgent beauty habits and plant you in the solidness of His love for you for He delights in you!

Primpness:  A daughter of the world who needs to do stuff to herself to make her beautiful.

Princess:  A daughter of the King who sees herself as beautiful as He sees her.