Scripture for March 26, 2011

Have you ever noticed the many different pictures there are of Jesus?

But, the fact is, they are all just an artist's idea of what Jesus might have looked like while Jesus was on the Earth. There is no real record of what He actually looked like. Even the people who saw Him everyday and wrote about Him in the Bible didn’t tell us what He looked like. The only clue the Bible gives about what He looked like is found in the Old Testament in Isaiah 53:2-3: “He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.”

It seems that Jesus’ outer appearance was not made important on purpose. That’s because the people that wrote about Jesus in the Bible wanted us to focus more on His inner beauty - the things He said and did and His message of love & forgiveness.

And that is Jesus’ message to us too. We should not worry about the things on the outside-like the color of our skin, the clothes we wear, how short or tall we are, how much money we have, stuff like that. Instead, we should focus on the stuff on the INSIDE by showing others our love. If we let others see our love for them, then they will see Jesus through us.

For your BUMC buck today, please tell me one thing you like about another person that is not a physical (outward appearance) attribute...