Beautiful People

Early this morning, I reaffirmed something I have believed for a long time. People are beautiful.

Period. All of them… every single last one of them. Tall ones, short ones, fat, skinny, long haired, short haired, bald, young, old, intelligent, naïve, innocent, guilty, mean and nice… they are all beautiful. Even when people don’t act very beautiful, even when they are one’s very own enemy, they are still quite inherently beautiful. It is possible to so suppress inherent beauty that it may take divine eyes to see it clearly, but I do believe (perhaps without exception) there is some beauty in everyone.

Sitting alone in one of my favorite breakfast spots this morning, I find myself in a room full of people I’ve likely never seen before. They are definitely people I’ve never met before. And as I am wrapping up my morning time in the holy beauty of God’s word in print, I find myself overwhelmed by the beauty all around me. Today, I’m just concentrating on the beauty of humanity. To include flora, fauna and general atmospheric beauty would be almost too much to comprehend in one day.

Sure one guy is louder than all others in the restaurant and he has an annoying tendency to chew his half order of French toast with his mouth opened. I can nearly hear him smacking each bite from where I sit! One young woman clearly struggles with “problem skin” and seems self-conscious about it as she sits with another who, in spite of being quite physically attractive, may have dressed in the dark. (Now, I’m no fashion icon but even I can tell that outfit doesn’t work – but to her credit it is still dark outside so when we all leave, she might have second thoughts on why she chose that blouse). Another guy looks entirely miserable as he sits alone reading his paper. He is dressed almost identically to me and the way we are both positioned in the room, we make an interesting pair of “identical bookends” all the way down to our similarly shaped frameless reading glasses. (His hair is more gray than mine, but I'm catching up).

Tables of trios, duos and monos all sitting together… disconnected and yet, somehow strangely, completely and utterly linked together in beauty. It must be that whole “image of God” thing again (Gen. 1:27) showing me that there is much more that connects mankind than that which separates.

As people, we tend to concentrate more on what is distinctive about us rather than what is common and I wonder what the net effect of that is. We divide, subdivide and segregate on the subjective basis of our own choosing rather than uniting, reuniting and unifying on the basis of something beyond us -- something that is Perfectly Beautiful.

Even the worst of us must have something beautiful about us. God certainly must think so. Why else, while we were still His enemies, He would make us His friends (Rom. 5:10)? Unless, of course, we only become "beautiful" once we are made His friends.

Rather than sitting in a room full of strangers, perhaps I should rather look at it as sitting in a room full of potential acquaintances... or maybe even future friends? I love all my friends. I think they are all beautiful people, each in their own very special way. Maybe this is where I should begin with all people… find the beauty first (even if they are enemies, or their beauty is more difficult to immediately pinpoint) so that one day, perhaps, we will all be beautiful friends!

So, here's my prayer for the day: "God, show me the beautiful way you see all people and teach me to love them like you do -- beautifully."

How do you see the beauty people?