Beautiful

Breakfast Club this week has been focused on the theme of physical growth. Growing physically is actually easy to do (but it does take effort). Basically: eat well, sleep well, and get a little exercise every day. Most of us understand the benefits and see how it is possible to make such growth easy (just mention eating better at home and see if more healthy food appears on the table). However, there is one thing that most of us struggle with: feeling good about the way we look.

You know what I am talking about. Media, marketing, and the overwhelming power of the world make us dissatisfied with the way we look. We want to be thin, we want to be athletic, have perfect skin, perfect hair, perfect nails, and the list goes on. I have stubby fingers and apparently this is not a good physical trait. I am prone to putting on weight, and I have have to go to the dermatologist in order to keep fungus from taking over my big toe. My khakis don’t fit well and I can’t find eye glasses that make me look cool. I say all this to just admit that we all care about how we look… but we need to grow to a place where we can care but still accept ourselves the way God made us. We need to see ourselves as God sees us: beautiful.

That we have problems accepting the way we look is completely understandable. We yearn for affirmation and the way we look is the “low hanging fruit” of this elusive goal. In some ways it is a good goal (for we should take care of ourselves, stay fit, present ourselves as best we can… it is not good to be a slob who has “given up” on such things). We think that we can eventually become the kind of person that has such physical beauty that we stand out in the crowd. The problem is we seldom achieve that goal and even if we do “get there” it never lasts. The march of time forces us out of the spotlight and dashes our hopes. The fact is clear: physical beauty is an idol and as such it always leads to unexpected bad places.

Today I spoke on the potential for developing physical beauty that never fades… the beautiful character trait of unselfishness (the secret of Greystone) which can become a source of beauty that all of us can have in abundance and make us stand out in the crowd. Not all of us will have perfect hair, perfect hands, perfect toes… but we can all grow to a level of perfection character wise. A Greystone Girl should SHINE with a beautiful spirit, and thankfulness and unselfishness define such beauty.

This next week of camp will focus on this beauty and encourage the girls to grow in this way. We will talk about it at Council Fire tonight, in Church, in devotions, in the Senior Celebration on Wednesday… and hopefully the girls will gradually absorb the lesson in such a way that it sticks.

The confidence that arises from a healthy attitude toward beauty is profound. Such confidence allows joy to flourish in our hearts. We find ourselves delighting in others as well as seeing ourselves with a grateful sense of how much we have been given. We shine in a dark world and make others better for knowing us. We pray that God will equip us all to face the false messages of the world with this powerful gift. Camp makes such truth evident, for we see it in each other.

Perhaps we can become strong enough to stand against such things. My prayer is that the girls will leave camp feeling genuinely beautiful. It is a worthy goal.

We are going into the “emotional” time of camp. I didn’t tear up in my talk this morning, but probably will pretty soon for I am feeling the welling emotion of camp every day. At morning assembly this morning I teared up hearing Bill talk on the subject of true love (I laughed too… that is what I call a great talk!). We wear our emotion on our sleeve without shame, for we trust each other and we delight in being unguarded with our response to what we see and hear. It is the best time of the summer. The best time of the year for many of us. Thank you for making it possible.