Beautiful Clothes

Hello, beautiful readers! Today I’d like to share this article written by my mother, Debbie Sanders, originally published in Reflections magazine, March/April 2018. I know you’ll enjoy!

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She was 4, maybe 5 at the most.  A tiny little thing with a sweet face.  Yet, by observing what she was wearing, one would have thought her to be a teenager. She had on tiny tight blue jeans accompanied by tiny little heels.  “She looks so sexy,” the clerk said to the little girl’s mother.  To my astonishment, the mother replied with an excited, “Thank you!”  It was as if she felt the clerk had just paid her the greatest compliment.

Sadly, too often in today’s vernacular, the word “sexy” has replaced the word “beautiful.”  The world places such importance on the physical appearance of girls, teaching the lie that our worth lies in what we look like and how much of our body we can show.  Therefore, according to The Statistics Portal, over 62 billion dollars was spent on cosmetics in 2016 in the U.S. alone, not to mention the billions spent on plastic surgeries, facelifts, Botox and the like.  Beauty products promise a more youthful, and therefore successful, lifestyle.  They guarantee to take an ordinary face and transform it into something of extraordinary beauty.  My new favorite, is the makeup that proclaims you will appear not to have any on at all!  How interesting to learn in Psalms 45:13 “The King’s daughter is all glorious within.”

I love the story of Esther — how that she was ushered to the palace as one of 400 “contestants” (according to Josephus) of the King’s beauty pageant, if you will. An entire year would be spent preparing this group of hand-picked young ladies for their night with the king.  One commentary uses the words “to rub” or “to polish” when describing the treatment they received.  They were taught how to carry themselves, apply beauty products, and don lavish costumes.  It was the equivalent to a finishing school.  And yet isn’t it interesting that the Jewish name for Esther, “Hadassah,” comes from the word for myrtle, a lowly shrub, and means “fragrance”? So many of the others had to have fragrance added to the outside, but this one lowly girl had all the fragrance she needed within.

The rule of the day is that true beauty lies in the look of youth.  Therefore, millions of women are willing to undergo the knife of a surgeon in order to disguise their true age and give the appearance that they are not growing older. They try to dress younger to appear so, often resulting in fashion disasters!

Proverbs 20:29 says that the beauty of old men is the gray head.  I love the thought that Rosemary Gwaltney brings in her article The Beauty of Old Age: “If God creates our gray or white hairs and thinks that they are beautiful, why shouldn’t we?”

Just as aging is natural, so are the signs of aging.  But these signs are pleasing to God, not something that we should be ashamed of.

“But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil” (Hebrews 5:14).

In other words, as we grow older and mature, we are blessed with wisdom gained through life experiences.  Thus, we can look at our signs of aging and know that they are viewed by God as signs of wisdom gained from years of experience.

Is it wrong to enjoying wearing clothes that we enjoy and feel good in? Absolutely not. 

Dressing in clothing that suits our body type well and colors that complement our skin tone, can often bring a boost to our self-image.  The mistake occurs when we focus primarily on outward beauty and not on being beautiful or “glorious” within.  We must ask ourselves these questions: “Am I aligning myself with the Word of God?  Do I live according to its principles?  Do my spirit and heart reflect Christ well? Would my actions and attitudes be an accurate reflection of my heavenly Father?” That’s where the true beauty lies.

There is a phrase that states, “Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.” What it means is that there are many varied scales of beauty, but the one doing the beholding decides whether or not someone is beautiful.  Safety comes when we let our Creator determine what being beautiful truly looks like.