HOW DO I LOOK?

“Do not worry in your soul, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not the soul more than food and the body more than clothing? …So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow...” (Mt 6: 25, 28-29)

Christ is NOT saying here that physical beauty is unimportant. After all, God “arrays” His creation with beauty, and He Himself is “clothed” with beauty (Ps 92/93:1). And we all know that we are entrusted with caring for God’s creation, including our own bodies; we all need a healthy routine or discipline, regarding eating and grooming.

What He is talking about here is balance. Because the way I eat and look, including my weight and clothes, can easily become a source of excessive “worry,” or even an obsession. Christ is saying to me: Don’t obsess over this. I can, and I will, says God, take care of this. He is also saying: Your capacity to see it, and to emanate it, comes from Me. So there is a deeper, bigger side to “beauty.” And I will constantly miss out on the bigger side if all my attention is directed at the physical one.

Today my focus will be a God-centered life, and I tend to my health, my appearance, and my well-being in His love and His light.