It is about beauty

NORSK
As a follow up of yesterday’s reflection on the principle of love that affects us in such a way that we become beautiful, I will write about beauty related to a chorus.

Albert Orsborn was the 6th General of The Salvation Army, and a gifted song-writer. For a long period he wrote one new song per week, and many of his songs are still used all over the world. Several of his songs will fit under the label “Holiness”, that is definitely true with regard to this chorus:

Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me,
All his wonderful passion and purity,
O thou Spirit divine,
all my nature refine,
Till the beauty of Jesus be seen in me. (1)

It is impossible to describe the “inner beauty” because there are no objective parameters to measure by. Yet, I never doubt that it is real and authentic when I 'see' it in many of my fellow men (2). 
Artists very often chose to portray Jesus as beautiful, while Isaiah prophesied that he ‘was despised, and we held him in low esteem’ (3). This does not mean that the artists are wrong, their desire may be to catch what John wrote:

We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:14b

I believe that this glory is the “inner beauty”, a beauty saturated with grace and truth. For me truth is a synonym to authenticity. This can be illustrated by the translators’ choice of words when Jesus described Nathanael – some prefer to use ‘true’, others ‘real’ and so on. Still, it is something beautiful, and I combination with grace it represents a love that can embrace the whole world.

‘Manna’ for today:

Holiness is about beauty

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(1) Orsborn wrote this song in 1922.
(2) The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Rom 8:16
(3) Isa 53:3