A Prayer for Seeing a Beautiful Person - Emmanuel Baptist Church
We heard on Sunday that Christians aren’t afraid of beauty. God is the creator of beauty, and the Bible teaches us to recognize and celebrate it. Furthermore, it teaches us that true beauty is an inner quality, reflective of God’s character, of which outer beauty should be a signpost (1 Peter 3:4, Proverbs 11:22, 31:30, 1 Samuel 25:3).
The sin that Solomon warned against in Proverbs 6:25 is the sin of coveting beauty, of wanting it for ourselves. The following prayer, from Douglas McKelvey’s “Every Moment Holy,” is written to help us guide our hearts away from coveting beauty, and towards celebrating beauty in a way that honours its Creator.
Lord, I praise you for divine beauty
Reflected in the form of this person.
Now train my heart so that my response
To their beauty would not be twisted
Downward into envy or desire,
But would instead be directed upward
In worship of you, their Creator—
As was your intension for all such beauty
Before the breaking of the world.Douglas Kaine Mckelvey, Every Moment Holy. Nashville, TN: Rabbit Room Press, 2017. Page 248.
Chris Hutchison is the lead pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Nipawin, SK. Have any feedback or questions about what you've read here? Send him an email at .
