744) Several weeks ago, I had a conversation with a friend and lamented that when I was in my 20s, I so wished my body was different than it was. (I had a list of things I would change.) I continued my conversation saying, I’d give anything to have the body I had then. My friend chuckled and said that as a middle-aged man, he looks at beauty differently than he did when he was young. He realized the value of internal beauty.

In Esther 2:8-18, King Xerxes is basically holding a beauty contest to pick his new queen. What blows my mind is how dedicated he was to his desire for a future wife. He requires each potential woman to complete 12 months of beauty treatments and then he would “try out” each woman to see if he approves. This set-up sounds more like a contest a teenaged boy would plan and not an older man. Regardless, this is what Esther endures.

When I used to teach older kids, I would challenge them to re-think this idea that physical beauty is all-important. I would bring up a name of a super-model and ask them what she would look like in her 60s and 70s. I could often see students deflate while considering this.

Physical beauty is nice, but it doesn’t last. Only what’s on the inside will so wouldn’t it be more prudent to concentrate on internal beauty treatments?