Genesis is Beautiful

Recently, I learned that the Hebrew word for "good" is also "beautiful".  Reread the first chapter of Genesis  substituting "good" with "beautiful".  You will get a very different feeling of that powerful account.  The light is beautiful.   The waters are beautiful.  The stars in the heavens, the plants that grow, and the birds of the air are beautiful  Everything that God created is beautiful, including you and  me.  The world has a way of saying that we are ugly, not God.  And the sad truth is that we come to believe the world.  In God's eyes, we are all beautiful.  We are all exactly what God intended.  We are all the work of God's hands.  This is a word of grace in our lives.

There was an old TV show called Cheers.  The comedy is set in a bar in Boston.  One of the main characters, early on in the show, was an older gentleman by the name of Coach.  He was gentle, funny, and a little confused.  In one of the shows, his daughter comes to visit.  He goes on and on about how beautiful she is.  When she arrives, she is not beautiful in the eyes of the world.  She is not beautiful in her own eyes.  At the end of the show, she confronts her father.  "Look at me", she says, "Really look at me."  She wants him to realize that she is not the beauty he tells everyone she is.  Coach takes a close look and gasps, "Oh my, I never realized how much you looked like your mother."  At that moment, his daughter realizes that her father will always see her as beautiful and she opens herself to the gift and says to him, "And mom was beautiful".  In the eyes of God, we are all beautiful.  May we be open to that gift of grace.