What is Beauty?

"Sexuality and spirituality are the bookends of a woman's soul."

Those were the words of Paula Rinehart, author of several books including Sex and the Soul of a Woman, as she spoke at the first-ever Navigators Rocky Mountain Region Women's Conference. So much wisdom was squeezed into this 24-hour retreat, titled "Beauty, the Body, and Belonging to Christ." But the "Beauty" session is what stood out to me the most.

Splendor and majesty are before Him, strength and beauty are in His sanctuary. --Psalm 96:6

God is strength, and He is beauty. As mankind was made in His image, He has created two separate sexes -- men to embody His strength, and women to embody His beauty.

But what does the beauty of women look like in tangible terms? Surely it doesn't mean physical beauty alone, because we come in some many different forms and shapes, in the same way men do. What makes women so different, so beautiful?

I don't know the answer to this. But I knew women possessed something special when I heard our voices alone, lifted in praise to God as we worshipped this past weekend -- something about female voices, loud, clear and in harmony. It's not nearly as beautiful as when men sing along.

Maybe he was just doing what is expected of him, but when a man held the door open for me this morning, warm smile in place, he made me feel like I possessed something special. I believe there is something about a woman that causes the average man to wait a few more seconds to hold the door open for her.

As I was biking on campus today, I started on the sidewalk in order to get to the road. A girl was walking the opposite direction, making slight eye contact with me, so timid, faint smile, stepping left and right, trying to figure out which side I was going to take and doing her best to accommodate me. She wasn't too pretty, at least not by "the world's" eyes. But something in my heart stirred toward her, and I knew she too possessed this something special. I knew there was something beautiful about her.

beauty noun -- The quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit.

Beauty makes us feel something, stirs our hearts in deeper ways, fills us with longing to somehow connect with this object of beauty.

Our beauty isn't just physical. Our beauty isn't just spiritual. Our beauty is essential -- it is the essence of who we are. We can't explain it, this concept of female beauty, in the same way we can't explain God's beauty. How is God beautiful? I can't describe. But He just is. And somehow, I am learning to see that God has invested a measure of His beauty in women as well.

Photo source.