Self Image
“Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the TRUTH, and the truth will set you free.” John 8:31-32
Yesterday I was at the grocery store waiting in the checkout line. As I was standing there, I couldn’t help but notice the magazines at the counter. You know the ones I am talking about. The ones that make you feel fat, boring, imperfect, inadequate. The ones that put the perfect super model on the cover with her perfect hair, her perfect skin, her perfect teeth and her perfect little life. I bet she even has a perfect boyfriend!
I was in a magazine once and I can assure you that very little of what you see is actually true. I know from personal experience. When I was a sophomore in college, a photographer came up to me in the student center and asked if he could take my picture. He went on to explain that he worked for a well-known magazine that would pay me for my time. Pay me? Why, of course! I was a hungry college student!
For the next ten minutes he clicked away. He told me to look happy. CLICK. Sad. CLICK. Angry. CLICK. Stressed out. CLICK. You name it. CLICK. CLICK. He explained to me that he takes pictures of all sorts of people from all walks of life. They have writers that fabricate elaborate stories and then they look for a picture that could go along with their story. And that’s exactly what they did! They used my picture with a fake name and a fake story… and voila! It somehow was deemed magazine worthy!
These very magazines that are so airbrushed, doctored, fake, made up, etc. are often the very thing we look at to measure our self worth! We look at them and say our nose is too big; our lips are too small. We think that our skin is too freckled; our hips are too big. We don’t measure up!
But the TRUTH says we do! In Genesis it says that we were “made in His image, the very image of God.” And in Psalms we are told, “we are fearfully and wonderfully made.” In Ephesians, the author writes, “we are God’s own possession, chosen for praise of His Glory.”
God says we were knit together in our mother’s womb! He made us in His image. And we are perfect because we are His. I chose to listen to the voice of TRUTH! What about you?