“Listen, O daughter, consider and give ear:
Forget your people and your father’s house.
The king is enthralled by your beauty;
honor him, for he is your lord.”
Women like to say that men are so shallow, but we aren’t much deeper! Little boys want to know if they are strong; little girls want to know if they are pretty. It doesn’t change when we grow up. We women still want to know that we are pretty. Our whole day can be ruined if we think we are having a bad hair day. Think of all the money you’ve spent on cosmetics and creams and all the accumulated hours you’ve spent in front of the mirror trying to make it tell you that you are beautiful. Have you ever seen a man depressed about his hat hair? Has there even been a man who lamented over his thin lips?
One Saturday morning I was singing with our worship team. We called it “practicing,” but we were really worshiping God for a few lovely hours. Oh, it was wonderful! As I was singing and worshiping with love flowing out of my heart for my Creator, one of the men on the team came over to me and said in my ear, “The king desires your beauty.” This man was not attracted to me nor I to him, so I figured he was telling me a Bible verse, something from God’s heart to mine. He occasionally encouraged people that way. When I went home I looked it up, and there it was in the middle of a wedding song. And it really was from God’s heart to mine because it touched me.
How happy I was to know that God thought I was pretty! It seems like such a silly thing, but let me tell you that when my abuser told me I was pretty, he wanted something from me. He used his compliments to manipulate me. And then I didn’t feel very pretty at all. In fact, I began to feel that my girlish prettiness and my growing body had betrayed me. Have you ever felt like that? I dressed in wide dresses in high school to cover up my body because I was so ashamed of it and the reaction it had gotten. Apostle Paul talks about his body as a tent, but my dresses were tents. I sewed my own clothes and always chose the biggest patterns that came nowhere near my real body. I wore colors that were instinctively bad for me and tried to make myself as invisible as I could. And here was God, years later, telling me that I was pretty and that He wanted my beauty!
If He hadn’t already done such a work in my heart, I would have suspected Him of having ulterior motives. Instead of feeling threatened by the news, however, I was delighted.
Any cursory reading of the Song of Solomon will tell you that the guy thought his bride-to-be was pretty! He did not say he loved her mind or her income or her management skills. He said—at great length and in embarrassing detail—that she was pretty!
God thinks you are pretty, too. He sees your beauty and doesn’t want anyone else to have it. The bride in this psalm is wearing beautiful clothes. Consider buying something beautiful to wear that delights you with its beauty—to remind you that God thinks you are beautiful.
This a page from the book When God Roared. Each page will be published, one per day, on this website. We pray that God uses it mightily in your life to swaddle you in His love and heal your precious heart.