Episode 328: I’m Talkin. . .Beauty

I’m Talking, episode 328 for July 28th, 2024.

This is Joel from the I’m Talking microcast, where I share my thoughts on a topic that has piqued my interest this past week.

This week, we’re talking beauty.

When I discovered that I had never used the word beauty before in my microcast, I was a little bit surprised because it seems like a word that would have come up before now at episode 328.

I was pleasantly surprised because it gave me a great word for this week.

As often I do, I was looking at definitions.

I feel like the word beauty is used enough where we kind of know what it means.

The shortest definition that I found, it was a pleasing aesthetic.

And so it’s not necessarily a person or an object or nature.

It could be any of those things.

And it’s something that catches your eye that makes you maybe take a second look because it just draws your attention.

So I think that’s a good working definition, something that just draws your attention.

And beauty in the human form has drawn the world’s attention for decades.

And when we are getting ready to go places, when we get up in the morning, it takes time.

And we may not be the most beautiful, but we do want to present ourselves in the best light.

And so we work on that.

And the world is captivated by beauty.

Some are captivated by the beauty of nature.

Some are captivated by the beauty of people.

Some are captivated by the beauty of motion, all kinds of ways that people look at beauty.

One of the things that is often said when one refers to beauty is, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

And so what I find beautiful versus what you may find beautiful could be different.

And therein lies the challenge for those of us who call ourselves Christians.

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and we know that our eyes are sometimes prone to lead us astray into looking at beauty incorrectly, into being drawn into something that has the potential of beauty, but actually pulls us away from God.

And so our eyes cannot always be trusted when it comes to beauty.

We don’t see as God sees.

So when we think of the word beauty as Christians, we have to think of the origin.

You know, you think of the creation story and at the end it says, and God looked over everything he had made and saw that it was very good.

In that there is a beauty.

And who defines that?

It’s almost like who defines truth that I’ve spoken of in the past.

And beauty is defined by God.

And it’s talking about our heart.

It’s talking about our mind.

It’s talking about our soul and the things that we really need to care about, spending more time in God’s word than we do on our hair, spending more time talking to God than we do brushing our teeth, spending more time in communication with God than we do in communication with nature.

Lots of ways that we can be drawn into beauty that draws us away from God.

And then we think about how we portray beauty.

It’s not that we want to go out looking disheveled or with bad breath, those kinds of things.

No, we want people to be drawn to an inner beauty that can only be seen because we are filled with the Holy Spirit.

We want God to work through us to show others the beauty of what He did on the cross, of what He did in creation, of what He is capable of and the love that He has shown us.

And if we are willing to set aside our own superficial beauty for the beauty of Jesus Christ, then we will draw others to want to know more about Him.

Until next week, this is Joel from the I’m Talking Microchap.

I’ll talk to you soon.