A friend once told me I was the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen. She said, “You’re beautiful, inside and out, and you don’t even know it.”

Unselfconscious inner beauty is one of the most attractive things on the planet, because we know--even though it may not register immediately--we know when we’ve been in the presence of something deeper than the flash-bang of a pretty face our a beautiful body. We know.

“Human beings know human beings too well to mistake where goodness comes from; when they see certain characteristics they will know they come only from the indwelling of Jesus. It is not the manifestation of noble human traits, but a real family likeness of Jesus. It is His gentleness, His patience, His purity, never mine.”
---Oswald Chambers

Let us not be confused by the shiny strings and colorful bows of a pretty package. If we seek to know what’s inside a person, we watch, and when we see the unmistakable characteristics of Christ, we know where the beauty comes from. We may deny it, and say the next lovely face is just the same. But deep inside, in our gut, we know what has substance and what does not.

It’s easy to find a Trojan horse in everything that seems too good to be true. And even those who radiate the beauty of Christ have flashes of ugliness, lapses back to their “original” or former self. We will never escape the burden of the flesh as long as we are on this earth.

When I am at the end of my rope, I can no longer trust anything I perceive in this life to be true; everything seems like a lie and self-doubt swallows me up. But, paradoxically, when I come to the end of myself, this is where I begin to shed my worthless packaging and become the gift itself, Christ-in-me. This is when I truly hold no strings, want nothing for myself, give myself freely to the beauty and the grace and the patience and the lovingkindness and the gentleness and the selflessness that is not me, but Him in me.

Human beings are fickle; they are frail. We do things that defy explanation; we will never know ourselves the way the Creator knows us. However, we need not explain, because he already knows the deepest recesses of our hearts. He is our supply.

The mark of a true friend is that we do not need to explain anything to them. We simply come back, and they welcome us home, no strings attached. Whatever our crisis, whatever our need, they are there--silent, strong, and without judgment, commentary, or manipulation. They are the ear that listens and embraces and validates. They are the arms that hold us, comfort us, quiet us. They are the glue that holds things together when everything is falling apart around us. They are the light that illuminates the rocky shore.

I want to be a creature of light. I want to be a true friend. I want to be a gift without strings. I want to be Christ who lives in me.