Beautiful Package, Beautiful Gift

My Mom got me a bible a few years ago for my 25th birthday. It's the Woman Thou Art Loosed Edition. It has some wonderful little "pearls" and stories to help you understand the verses better. Since I took my prayer for my friends in my previous entry from Colossians 1:9-12, I saw in my Bible the little pearl that she gives "Put the truth in your spirit and feed, nurture, and allow it to grow. Quit telling yourself, "You're too fat, too old, too late, or too ignorant." Stop feeding yourself that garbage.

With that comes a story taken from Colossians 1:9-11 that I thought I would share with you.

Beautiful Package,
Beautiful Gift
Colossians 1:9-11

The greater part of your attractiveness--the part that draws or attracts other people to you--is on the inside, not on your flesh. Our society spends billions of dollars a year to convince you to buy hundreds, even thousands of dollars worth of clothes and makeup in order to fix up something that doesn't really matter all that much. We spend countless hours at beauty salons and spas and malls in order to buy, acquire, or create the things we think will draw other people to us, but which actually have very little drawing power. What you create or design on the outside of yourself may turn a head or two, but it is powerless to turn a mind or a heart.

You are bombarded daily with messages that tell you that if you will only go to the right weight-loss center and get down to the right size, dye your hair the right shade, go to the right spa, use the right toothpaste, put on the right makeup, wear the right outfit at the right time, and be seen in the right places with the right people, then you will most certainly be able to attract the right man and have the right children and live in the right neighborhood and enjoy the right kind of life!

When we do this and nothing "right" happens for us, we are puzzled. We sit back and ask, "What went wrong?" This is what went wrong: We became the merchandise for those who tried to sell us the merchandise. We've been had! The average women, Christians included, will spend thousands of dollars this year on hats and hair color, earrings and evening dresses. Sadly, they will make no real investment to build up or support those inner qualities that truly attract others to us and to Jesus Christ our Savior.

If you are only concerned with what you look like, you are going to be a very shallow, superficial person. People are going to find that once they have quit playing with you, the box you came in was beautifully wrapped, but empty.

Go back to the source of your attractiveness--the Holy Spirit of God. He is the One who woos and wins the heart. When you are His woman, He will draw you to the right people for the right purposes at just the right time.

My reflections:
This reminds me of some conversations that I had in high school with some friends. We were all talking about boys...some of us had that knack for picking the wrong person to have a crush on...that someone that would never even give us the time of day. I can remember thinking sometimes and some of my girlfriends and I even talked about this: "Would you rather have the girlfriend that is really pretty but a real witch, or would you rather have the girlfriend that has a wonderful heart and is pretty on the inside, but isn't totally hot on the outside?" I've let myself go physically and I'm trying to get it back. I don't see anything wrong with that, but at the same time, I never want to let my spirit on the inside go...I want to be the person that everyone likes and I know there's always room to improve my spirit...it is truly what is on the inside that counts.