What can I do if others call me ugly, or if I feel that way myself?
Isaiah 29:15-16What sorrow awaits those who try to hide their plans from the Lord, who do their evil deeds in the dark! “The Lord can’t see us,” they say. “He doesn’t know what’s going on!” How foolish can you be? He is the Potter, and he is certainly greater than you, the clay! Should the created thing say of the one who made it, “He didn’t make me”? Does a jar ever say, “The potter who made me is stupid”?
Psalm 139:13-16You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.
The world’s perception of ugliness is not God’s. When the world or we ourselves call what God has made “ugly,” we are questioning God’s character, power, and wisdom. We may well believe God made mistakes with us. Rejecting God’s work in our lives makes no more sense than a pot questioning its potter. Ugliness in our lives can be addressed by first asking if we have brought about the ugliness we and others can see, and if so, repentance is in order. But if the ugliness is simply present through no fault of our own, we can surrender to God’s plan and ask him to bring beauty where we can only see ugliness.
Isaiah 53:1-6Who has believed our message? To whom has the Lord revealed his powerful arm? My servant grew up in the Lord’s presence like a tender green shoot, like a root in dry ground. There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him. He was despised and rejected—a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care. Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins! But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed. All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.
The picture of Jesus given by Isaiah reminds us that Jesus experienced both a lack of physical beauty and various repeated accusations of ugliness. When we struggle with feeling unlovely and unlovable, we must remember that he knows those feeling firsthand. His companionship with us is not just his presence, but his likeness to us.
Matthew 8:1-3Large crowds followed Jesus as he came down the mountainside. Suddenly, a man with leprosy approached him and knelt before him. “Lord,” the man said, “if you are willing, you can heal me and make me clean.” Jesus reached out and touched him. “I am willing,” he said. “Be healed!” And instantly the leprosy disappeared.
Feeling ugly leaves us seeing ourselves as untouchable. The world seldom hesitates to agree with us. Jesus made it a practice to touch those who were officially and in all likelihood visually untouchable. Whatever is causing our ugliness would never prevent Jesus from reaching out to us. He makes whole what the world is inclined to call ugly.
John 9:1-14As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man who had been blind from birth. “Rabbi,” his disciples asked him, “why was this man born blind? Was it because of his own sins or his parents’ sins?” “It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins,” Jesus answered. “This happened so the power of God could be seen in him. We must quickly carry out the tasks assigned us by the one who sent us. The night is coming, and then no one can work. But while I am here in the world, I am the light of the world.” Then he spit on the ground, made mud with the saliva, and spread the mud over the blind man’s eyes. He told him, “Go wash yourself in the pool of Siloam” (Siloam means “sent”). So the man went and washed and came back seeing! His neighbors and others who knew him as a blind beggar asked each other, “Isn’t this the man who used to sit and beg?” Some said he was, and others said, “No, he just looks like him!” But the beggar kept saying, “Yes, I am the same one!” They asked, “Who healed you? What happened?” He told them, “The man they call Jesus made mud and spread it over my eyes and told me, ‘Go to the pool of Siloam and wash yourself.’ So I went and washed, and now I can see!” “Where is he now?” they asked. “I don’t know,” he replied. Then they took the man who had been blind to the Pharisees, because it was on the Sabbath that Jesus had made the mud and healed him.
God allows certain experiences into our lives including ugly ones, not because we have sinned, but because he intends to do something beautiful in and through us. The man born blind had to live a long time with the suspicions of others that he or his parents had sinned and caused his handicap. Jesus corrected those unjust and heartless assumptions by healing the man. God continues to bring about beauty by direct healing as well as through the advancements in medicine and science.
