What Happens to Beauty as You Age
Filed under {!-- ra:000000001e09599400000000523d95e9 --}{if 'What Happens to Beauty as You Age' == '52home' && category_name == '52home'} Biblical Womanhood | Beauty {if:else} Biblical Womanhood | Beauty {/if}“In today’s culture, youth equals beauty. This means that one day, we will all fall short of the standard. Sure, we can try to forestall the effects of aging and fake the appearance of youth with creams and tucks and lifts, but Paul’s description of aging is as blunt as it is inevitable: ‘Our outer self is wasting away’ (2 Cor. 4:16). Aging pries loose the fingers that have so tightly grasped onto the physical beauty of youth, one by one. The aging woman no longer relies on her looks for happiness or friendship. She can’t bank on her figure to get or keep a husband. She isn’t striving to gain beauty, and she has stopped worrying about keeping it. While she doesn’t look as outwardly attractive as she once did, it doesn’t matter like it once did.
God’s Word doesn’t deny or mask the effects of aging (as do so many of our beauty treatments). Instead, it declares that growing old in God is a gift, a blessing….
Scripture looks at aging from the perspective of the finish line and rejoices with each milestone of maturity: congratulations, you are getting closer! From this direction, even the outward, physical signs of aging are seen in a different light: ‘Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is gained in a righteous life’ (Prov. 16:31). God’s Word celebrates aging, an we should celebrate it too. For every day brings us closer to the day when Jesus Christ ‘will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body’ (Phil. 3:21). Even though our physical beauty will inevitably fade, we have the hope of the resurrection where he will change our lowly body to be like his glorious one. We will don a beauty beyond anything that we can imagine.
Though many women become hard and bitter as they grow old, a woman who trusts God, who pursues a gentle and quiet spirit through the many trials and temptations in her life, grows more radiant and lovely, even as she wastes away. Her beauty is an imperishable beauty, after all. This is the powerful, living paradox of true beauty.“
~True Beauty, p. 91-92