“More Beautiful You” – Jonny Diaz

“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” Psalm 139:14

As a mother of two girls, I have to keep that verse on my lips.  Unfortunately, I have seen the lies at an early age.  It became frighteningly clear one night as I stopped my daughter from running laps in the house.  I asked her, “Honey, what are you doing?  You are driving me crazy!”  Her response, “Oh mom, don’t stop me; just a few more calories to lose!”  I stared in disbelief at my tall, lanky daughter.  It took some time but eventually she told me that a girl in her class said she looked fat so she was exercising to lose weight – so she could be thin.  I wanted to scream!  She is 7, and she is already fighting the lies that society feeds our young girls!  I wanted to punch Satan squarely in the face – how cruel!  How deceptive!  I looked into my precious girl’s eyes and told her what I knew to be true – that her Creator made her perfectly, that there is so much more to her than what she looks like, and she is beautiful!  I told her not to measure herself by what people say about her but by the Word of God.  I pulled out my limited Biblical knowledge and gave her verse after verse about how God made her in an amazing and wonderful way, that He is enthralled with her beauty, that He knows everything about her including the number of hairs on her head, that He holds every tear in His hand!  It worked, but I know that we will have that talk again.  I know because God has to have that same talk with me…when I gain weight after surgery, when I am so tired I doubt I’m any good to any one, when I feel like nothing I do matters.  Have you ever been there?  Jonny Diaz has a song out called “More beautiful you” and it is beautiful and touching.  It reminds us that God has made us who we are and has gifted us with things that are unique to us – we are indeed wonderfully made!

The man wanted to justify his actions, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”  Luke 10:29

Many of us know the story by heart, the man, who thinks he is good enough, goes to Jesus, and asks that infamous question, “Who is my neighbor?”  To which Jesus, who never skirts around the truth, tells him the parable of the Good Samaritan.  And, what a parable it is!  A man beside the road and left for dead is stepped over and away from by supposedly “good” people of the day, religious leaders and clerics.  But, then there comes a man, an enemy by culture, and yet something leads him to stop, something leads him to become the neighbor to this man.  Something causes him to step out of his comfort zone, onto defiled ground, and help a dying man.  Jesus tells us plainly what sets him apart.  “He was filled with compassion for the man.”  Compassion.  It is the thing that unites us most with Christ, the emotion that needs to guide more of our actions, and a gift that we all inherit from His Holy Spirit.  It is the thing that makes the stranger look beyond the color of the skin, the stinch of the surroundings, the fear of what might be lurking, and straight into the eyes of a hurting desperate soul.  I love the song, “Be the Blessing” by Naomi Carroll.  It is an honest look at the excuses we make not to be “neighbors,” the cop outs that we use in order to offset our guilt, but it doesn’t hold any water in the cup of compassion!  Look around you, our neighbors are all around us.  In the form of a single mother needing a break, in the eyes of an abused child, in the swagger of a drunk man on the street, in the stare of a drug addict.  Each one of these, though scary or challenging, needs our assistance.  So, ask Jesus today, “Who is my neighbor?”  You, too, might be surprised at His answer!