When I Don't Like the Way I Look

Devotional

You're standing in front of the mirror and something bugs you.

Your height. Your nose. Hair that will not do the one thing you're asking it to do.

Or maybe somebody at school said something about how you look, and now their voice plays in your head every single time you catch your reflection.

Almost everybody has stood in front of a mirror and wished they saw somebody else.

But here's the thing about mirrors. A mirror can show you a real face. It cannot tell you what that face is worth.

For that you need a different voice. You need the voice of the person who made you.

Very first chapter of the Bible: "God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good."

Not fine. Not good enough for now.

Very good.

And he wasn't being general about it. Listen to how personal this gets:

"You knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made."

Knitted. Think about that word for a second.

Knitting is slow. Every stitch goes exactly where somebody decides to put it. Nobody knits by accident.

God didn't run people through a factory. He made you. Your eye color. The sound of your laugh. How long your fingers are.

You're not an accident. You're not a rough draft.

Now, the world does judge people by the outside. It always has.

When Samuel was looking for Israel's next king, he saw a tall good-looking guy and thought, obviously it's him.

God said no. "Man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart."

And then God picked David. The youngest brother. The one out with the sheep. The one nobody called in from the field.

God's way of seeing is nothing like ours.

That doesn't mean your body doesn't matter. It means your body isn't what decides your worth.

Paul says, "We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus."

Workmanship. Like a piece somebody made carefully, on purpose.

And here's one more thing I don't want you to skip.

Jesus had a body. A real one. A face, hands, feet, a voice. He got tired and hungry. The Bible never once says he was especially good-looking.

And in that regular human body he did the most important thing that's ever happened. He lived a perfect life, died for sinners, and came out of the grave.

If the Son of God was willing to wear a human body, then human bodies matter more than any comment anybody makes about yours.

So the next time the mirror bugs you, remember whose work you are.

He looked at what he made and called it very good.

And he meant you.