Beauty

It's funny that someone said that beauty is only skin deep. What a bunch of malarky. Beauty exists on so many levels. I have a book that I'm not smart enough to read called 'The Evidential Power of Beauty' that basically makes the case that the beauty that exists everywhere in the universe is evidence of a Creator.

Not my point.

I'm typing this while holding my newborn daughter. Her lineage is a combination of African American, Portuguese and something else. She is beautiful. Her every feature is perfect. Her long fingers, her eyelashes, her amazing eyes, her silky black hair - absolutely breathtaking.

We said yes to her without having any idea how stunning she would be. But her beauty was a given because she was designed and crafted by the same Guy who made masterpieces such as Niagara Falls, the Redwood Forest, Lake Michigan and the Rocky Mountains. He made the stars also. Flowers, some too small to readily see. If God makes a teeny tiny flower so small that no one ever notices it, is it still beautiful? Oh yeah.

Last night (10/20/2010) I had the honor and privilege of holding the tiny fingers of a newborn baby who happens to have been given 47 chromosomes in each of his cells, a condition we call Down's Syndrome. He was beautiful. He was very obviously crafted by God Himself, knit together perfectly from the moment he was conceived.

And his beauty is not only as deep as his skin. It goes all the way to his heart, to his spirit. It is hard for us to comprehend why God does what He does the way He does it. This boy was not a planned intended desired pregnancy. God invaded the space of a couple not wanting children anyway, and made a child that something like 92% of couples who find out they're carrying one will choose to end his life.

What is beautiful? We live in such a skewed world when it comes to beauty. We paint our faces and color our hair and cloth ourselves in such a way as to feel beautiful. But beauty is active. Beauty is living. Beauty is way more than skin deep. It goes all the way down to, well, to the uterus.