The Eye of the Beholder

The other day my two-year-old granddaughter Kayla got her first haircut. Unfortunately the barber was her four-year-old sister Abbie, who for some reason thought it prudent to borrow her mom's pinking shears and cut off a third of Kayla's locks. Not many kids can say their first haircut was a Mohawk styled by a preschooler.

I was surprised when Kayla didn't get particularly upset about the whole thing. Actually, she kind of likes her new hairstyle. Twenty years from now, the girls will look back at the incident and wonder why they did it, but today they just look at the mirror and smile.

Beauty is hard to define. Tastes vary when it comes to music, architecture, art, and ice cream. As garage sales prove, one man's trash is another man's treasure.

Other cultures do not share an American definition of loveliness. In a remote Ethiopian village I saw a young woman wearing an unusual piece of jewelry: a plastic pen pushed through a hole in her upper lip. My missionary hosts explained this was simply her way of trying to look beautiful, just as an American woman might wear earrings.

Why does one person visit a quiet countryside or a crowded city and exclaim, "What a wonderful place!" while someone else mutters, "I wouldn't live there if you paid me a million dollars"? Why does one man spend hours strolling on an ocean beach, while another hates getting a single grain of sand in his shoe?

Have you ever looked at a married couple who seemed a bit mismatched and privately asked yourself, "What does she see in him?" or "Why does he consider her attractive?"

According to an old adage, love is blind—but I disagree. Real love can see quite well; it just chooses to overlook the loved one's imperfections.

The Bible's great love poem, the Song of Songs, employs some figures of speech that are clear and compelling ("Many waters cannot quench love"), while others sound strange indeed. Most women today wouldn't take kindly to having their hair compared to a flock of goats or their teeth likened to freshly shorn sheep. In biblical times, though, a man could use these metaphors to melt his lover's heart. It didn't matter whether anyone else agreed with his assessment or not; to him she was beautiful beyond words.

Many Bible students see the Song of Songs as a poetic portrayal of Christ's love for the church. All I can say is, if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the Lord Jesus must have very tender eyes. How could he look at people like us and see any beauty there? How could he look at all our sinful, shameful ways and see a bride without blemish, spot, or wrinkle? How could he see anything worth dying for?

Even at our best, we fall far short of our Maker's design. We're all flawed and eccentric, marred by an inner ugliness no makeup or stylish clothes can hide. Only someone with incredible grace could love us.

And praise God, he does.