BEAUTY IS ONLY SKIN DEEP

BEAUTY IS ONLY SKIN DEEP

 Future historians could well reckon the last 20 years of human history as ‘The Cosmetic Age’ because we exist in an era of abject superficiality, i.e. we are overly fascinated with glitz and glamour.  On a daily basis, we are bombarded with media images that narrowly define beauty for us.  To wit, the majority of goods and services are marketed and advertised by the so-called ‘BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE.’   We consumers seem to have insatiable appetites for products that could somehow transform us into the image of those stylish models that shrewd businesses use to lure us.  This shallow emphasis on exterior beauty causes many to become desensitized and disapproving of people and things that do not physically mirror perfection.  

 My friend, the very next time you are tempted to judge someone by their physical appearance, please recall the following touching tale by an unknown author:

 Our house was directly across the street from the clinic entrance at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.  We lived downstairs and rented upstairs rooms to clinic outpatients.  One summer evening as I was fixing dinner, there was a knock at the door.  I opened and beheld a truly awful looking man.

‘Why, he’s hardly taller than my eight-year-old,’ I thought as I stared at his stooped, shriveled body.  But the most appalling thing was his face; it was lopsided, swollen, red and raw.  Yet his voice was pleasant as he said, “Good evening.  I’ve come to see if you have a room for just one night.  I am here from the eastern shore for a treatment, and there’s no return bus until morning.”  He told me he had been hunting for a room since noon, but with no success.  “I guess it’s my face...I know it looks terrible, but my doctor says with a few more treatments…”

For a moment I hesitated, but his next words really grabbed hold of me: “I could sleep in this rocking chair on the porch,” he suggested.  “My bus leaves early in the morning.”  I told him we would find him a bed, and he could rest on the porch for the time being.

I went inside and finished preparing dinner.  When we were ready, I asked the old man if he would join us.  “No, thank you,” he said.  “I have plenty!”  And he held up a brown paper bag.  When I finished the dishes, I went back out on the porch to talk with him a few minutes.  It didn’t take a long time to see that this old man had an oversized heart deposited in that tiny body.  He told me he was a fisherman and worked hard to support his daughter, her five children, and her husband, who had been permanently crippled.

He didn’t tell it by way of complaint.  In fact, every other sentence was prefaced with thanks to God for one blessing or another.  He seemed very grateful that no pain had accompanied his disease, which was apparently a form of skin cancer.  And he thanked God for just giving him the strength to keep going.

 At bedtime, we put a cot in the children’s room for him.  When I rose the next morning, the bed linens were neatly folded and the little man was already out on the porch.  He refused breakfast, but just before he left for his bus, he hesitantly asked for a favor.  “Could I please come back and stay the next time I have a treatment?  I won't put you out a bit.  I can sleep fine in a chair.”  He paused a moment and then added, “Your children made me feel right at home.  Grownups are bothered by my face, but children don’t seem to mind.”  I assured him that he was welcome to come again.

On his next trip, he arrived a little after seven in the morning.  As a gift, he brought a big fish and a quart of the largest oysters I had ever seen.  He said he had shucked them that morning before he left so they would be nice and fresh.  I knew the bus left from his home at 4:00 a.m. and I wondered what time he had to get up to do this for us. 

 For several years he came to stay overnight with us, and there was never a time that he did not bring us fish or oysters or vegetables from his garden.  At other times we received packages in the mail, always by special delivery: fish and oysters packed in a box of fresh young spinach or kale, every leaf carefully washed.

Knowing that he walked three miles to mail these, and knowing how little money he had made the gifts doubly precious for us.  When I received these little remembrances, I often thought of a comment our next-door neighbor made after this dear man had left our home that first morning. “Did you keep that awful looking man last night?  I turned him away!  You can lose roomers by putting up such people!”

 Maybe we did lose roomers once or twice.  But oh!  If only they could have known him, perhaps their own illnesses would have been easier to bear.  I know our family always will be grateful to have known him; from him we learned what it was to accept the bad without complaint and the good with total gratitude to God.

Recently I visited a friend who has a greenhouse.  As she showed me flowers, we came to the most beautiful one of all, a golden chrysanthemum that was bursting with blooms.  To my great surprise, it was growing in an old dented, rusty bucket.  I thought to myself, “If this were my plant, I would put it in the loveliest container I had!” But my green-thumbed friend changed my mind.  “I ran short of pots,” she explained, “and knowing how beautiful this one would be, I thought it wouldn’t mind starting out in this old pail.  It’s just for a little while, till I can put it out in the garden.”

She must have wondered why I was laughing so spontaneously and happily, but at that moment I was imagining a similar scene in heaven.  “Here’s an especially beautiful one,” God might have said when he came to the soul of that sweet old fisherman.  “He’s so beautiful that surely he wouldn’t mind starting out in this particular body.”

 My friends, let’s learn to love and live in the image and likeness of our Creator.  The Word declares that “man looks on the outward appearance, but THE LORD looks on the heart.” (II Corinthians 10:7b)

Sisters and brothers, be continually blessed, and please (above all else) MAKE SURE YOU ARE READY TO MEET OUR SOON COMING KING.  Maranatha!