In the morning, my late husband Dan always sat at the kitchen counter long before I got up. He liked to rise before dawn, have his coffee and read the news. As a lawyer he kept up on the legal notices, business developments and classifieds. And the obituaries.

Eventually, still groggy with sleep I’d come down the stairs in my lumpy bathrobe, my hair a tangle and not really wanting conversation till I had my morning coffee. Dan always greeted me with “‘Morning, Beautiful” and a grin.Usually I grunted something less endearing back at him and gave him a quick peck on his forehead. It was our morning routine for decades especially when we’d retired. Dan always told me I was beautiful, whether I was pregnant and feeling miserable or dressed to the nines for a party or the first thing he saw on the stairs in the mornings.When Dan told me I was beautiful it was his love that changed how I felt about myself, not cosmetics.

“Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder” implies that beauty is subjective and depends solely on the one who perceives something to be beautiful. Postmodernism claims that there’s no such thing as objective standards of beauty. Like truth and faith, beauty is relative. I challenge such naysayers to deny the intricate beauty of a sunflower head or look at a night sky or share the first smiles of a baby. The beauty around me in creation, in other people’s unique designs – and also in myself – is part of God’s imprint in our souls. At the end of each day in Creation God looked around at His handiwork and declared “It is good.” Finally God created humans, the pinnacle of all His work and declared that we were very good.” We were perfect and beautiful and cherished by the Father, made in His image and likeness. When Adam and Eve walked with the Lord God in the cool of the evening, His eyes beheld them and they were beautiful, like lilies in the fields of Eden.

Then the Fall came. With it came wrinkles and scars, illness, crippling and maiming, corrupted flesh and the final decaying indignity of the grave. Fear of our ultimate aging and corruption threatens our pride, making us chase after the endless “fountains of youth,” to make us believe we are still beautiful. Satan the deceiver tells us we’re ugly and old, too thin, too fat, too different, so we’re forever trying to adjust our self image to the worldly “ eye of the beholder” standards. And we fail miserably.

Blessedly, Jesus came He walked among the lame, the lepers and the blind – the outcasts who felt unworthy to be seen, let alone be embraced. Jesus had the loving eyes of the Father. He not only noticed them, He saw them exactly as they were. He touched their wounds, held them close and His arms surely made them feel beautiful again. He loved them in all their disfigurement and fleshly corruption. Jesus’ Eyes beheld them and love changed their ashes to beauty.

Whereas the world’s eyes shames our nakedness, Scripture says God keeps us like the apple of His eye. We are as close to God as the pupil in our human eyes. We are never unseen. I am His beautiful child, no matter what the mirror shows. Jesus’ love transforms us so that we can come to Him morning, noon and night looking shabby, rumpled and not at our best. He turns His gaze toward us to says, Hello Beautiful!

How then can we not choose to adore God with our eyes as David did in Psalm 27.

“One thing I have asked of the LORD; this is what I desire: to dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the LORD and seek Him in His temple.