You Look Great

I had a hair cut appointment.
I realized that I was a bit early as I pulled into the parking space.
I got a text message that I was able to leisurely read and answer as I sat there.
I took off my sunglasses and exchanged them for my regular glasses and went inside.

I was still a bit early so I sat for a few minutes.
The stylist that has been cutting my hair for years called me back to the sink area.
This is my routine every four weeks so I know the drill.
She put a cape around me to protect my clothes from hair clippings.

We talked as we do each month.
We picked up right where we left off the month before.
We know each other’s lives after all this time.
I trust her, which for any woman, is so important when someone is cutting your hair.

I saw someone I knew and stopped to say hello.
I gave her a hug because I knew that she just had a birthday.
You look great, she said and I giggled in disbelief.
My hair was wet and slicked back against my head and I had a towel around my shoulders.

I sat down and got my hair cleaned up as my stylist says.
She re-trimmed the layers.
She shaped it up.
She used a diffuser to dry my hair in order to keep all the natural curls and waves.

I was listening and talking but I was thinking.
You look great, still echoed in my head.
Those words did not echo in a boastful way.
Those words did not linger to make me proud or full of myself.

The words lingered because I did not look great at that moment.
To her, I did.
Looking great must mean something more.
Looking great has nothing to do with wet hair slicked back or a towel around your neck.

Women thrive on the sweet admiration of their husband.
A woman may be in a pair of comfy pants and sweatshirt and her husband says she is beautiful.
A woman will not have any makeup on and her husband still thinks she looks great.
Her children tell her she is the greatest mommy in the whole world.

What is greatness anyway?
Are we great just because someone says so?
Is our outer appearance the only thing people notice?
What about the inside?

Our culture cares much more about the outside.
Fix this one thing and look younger.
Change this and you will be happier.
Hide that and you will feel like a new you.

Really?
No outward adjustment will take care of what is wrong on the inside.
No focus on the outside will ever change the heart.
The heart is the source of true greatness.

We all know the person who, by the world’s standards, is quite plain.
Yet, they are beautiful, inside and out.
They are beautiful because their heart is beautiful.
Their heart is beautiful because the Holy Spirit lives there.

It is a beauty that is undeniable.
It is a beauty you cannot put your finger on.
It is an inner beauty that simply has to flow outward.
A person may see that beauty and be attracted to it without ever really understanding it.

Yet for those who are in Christ, that beauty is known and understood.
It is not a superficial beauty.
It is a beauty that goes down deep.
It is a beauty that exudes from a person, though they are unaware it is even there.

For great is the LORD and greatly to be praised. (Psalm 96:4)

I always remember a quote from the book, Prince Caspian, of the Chronicles of Narnia.
Edmund, one of the Pevensie children, was walking with two great lords of the army of Miraz.
No one recognized him.
They were not sure if the group came to attack or surrender.

...between them a figure they could not recognize. Nor indeed would the other boys at Edmund’s school have recognized him if they could have seen him at that moment. For Aslan had breathed on him at their meeting and a kind of greatness hung about him.
(Prince Caspian, C.S. Lewis)

A kind of greatness hung about him.
Those words have tumbled over and over in my mind since the first time I read them.
What made Edmund great?
Reading Prince Caspian, you know that nothing Edmund did on his own made him great.

According to his creator, [C.S. Lewis] Aslan is not an allegory for Christ but the Christ of Narnia. The distinction is vital. Were Aslan only an allegory, a mere stand-in for the hero of the Gospels, he would not engage the reader as he does. In fact, as Lewis explained, Aslan is what the second person of the Trinity (God the Son) might have been like had he been incarnated in a magical world of talking animals and living trees. As such, Aslan takes on a force and a reality that speaks to us through the pages of the Chronicles of Narnia. (www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/thinking-about-aslan-and-jesus-with-c-s-lewis)

That which made Edmund great is the same thing that makes us great.
Aslan breathed on him.
When Aslan the lion breathed on him, Edmund was never the same.
We, like Edmund, are never the same when the Lion of Judah breathes on us and makes us new.

You look great.
I hope so, but not for any superficial reason.
I hope there is a greatness that hangs about me because of the Lord Jesus.
I hope that I am unrecognizable because He is so prominent in my countenance.

How I wish I had told the woman I met that she also looked great.
My hair was dripping and I needed to follow the stylist to her chair.
However, the woman knows the Lord Jesus; He has breathed on her and made her new.
There is a greatness that hangs about her as well.

Greatness is not about pride.
Greatness is not about boasting.
Only Jesus is truly great.
When Jesus breathes on us, His greatness hangs about us for others to see.