Do you feel like you’re pretty enough? Are you secure with your physical attractiveness, or are you laboring under a constant pressure to be thinner, buffer, or better looking?

If you feel that pressure, you’re certainly not alone. Our culture today puts so much beauty pressure on us that it’s almost as if we’ve been transported to Jupiter, and are toiling under a vastly disproportionate gravitational pull. A 200 lb man on Earth would weigh several times that much on Jupiter, and would find the increased gravitational weight nearly crushing.

Lots of people are being crushed today beneath the weight of our beauty-worshipping culture, and they need to be reminded of several truths:

1. Beauty is never skin deep. A person’s character really does overtake their appearance. The Greek poet, Sappho, said, “What is good is beautiful, and who is good will soon also be beautiful.”
2. Beauty must be assessed by its season. Ecclesiastes 1:11 says, “Everything is beautiful in its time.” The middle or old aged seasons of life are vastly different from the 20-something season of life and they must be judged accordingly. When we reject our culture’s one-dimensional-youth-only view of beauty, we can agree with the Proverbs that “the beauty of the aged is gray hair” (Proverbs 20:29).
3. Beauty (really is) in the eye of the beholder…and the Lord, your beholder, thinks you’re beautiful! (See: 1 Samuel 16:7; Proverbs 31:30; 1 Peter 3:4-5; Psalm 45; Hosea 2:16-20; Isaiah 62:3-5; and many dozens of other Scriptures)

So, while you’re choosing the right hairstyle and watching what you eat, please do it from a responsible place of health versus a frantic plea for acceptance. You already are accepted and you already are loved.