Looking Your Best For Your Heavenly Bridegroom
Your beauty should not come from outward adornment … Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.
1 Peter 3:3-4
God could have created a very functional, very bland, black-and-white world. Instead, he made a universe abounding in luxuriant variety, rich colors and amazing textures. He created a world for all his creatures to enjoy.
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The adorning of creation provides a lesson on which Peter draws in 1 Peter 3, and which poet Anne Bradstreet underscores in this insight.
WALK WITH ANNE BRADSTREET
If so much excellence abides below,
How excellent is He that dwells on high,
Whose power and beauty by His works we know?
Sure He is goodness, wisdom, glory, light,
That hath this under world so richly dight*…
My great Creator I would magnify,
That nature had thus decked liberally:
But ah, and ah, again, my imbecility!
O Time, the fatal wrack of mortal things,
That draws oblivion’s curtains over kings,
Their sumptuous monuments, men know not,
Their names without a record are forgot,
Their parts, their ports, their pomp’s all laid in th’ dust,
Nor wit, nor gold, nor buildings ‘scape time’s rust;
But He whose name is graved in the white stone
Shall last and shine when all of these are gone.
* Obsolete word meaning “adorned” or “arrayed.”
WALK CLOSER TO GOD
Outward adornment is nice—but not necessary. By contrast, inward adornment is more than a good idea; it is a command!
God has called his bride to develop a beautiful inner life—a life adorned with the fruit of his Spirit, a life colored by the character of Christ.
And, as Peter suggests, a meek and quiet spirit is a good place to start “looking your best” for God.
