It’s about Time

High notions of oneself are annihilated
by a glance in the mirror.

—Nobel Poet, Czeslaw Milosz                                                           

A Botox cosmetic ad appears on our television screen every once in a while that features a stunningly beautiful young model who smiles at her audience and murmurs, “It’s about time.” Exactly! 

Time is the enemy. We invest in vitamin supplements, serums, tightening concentrates, firming creams, cellulite removers—a plethora of pills and potions—in an effort to stave off the effects of free-radical damage and try to iive, or at least look alive as long as possible. We battle every age spot, blemish, and bulge, but nothing works very well, or very long. The hours "ill our brow with lines and wrinkles," Shakespeare lamented. Time overwhelms us. We look our age and it’s not a pretty sight to see. 

Which is exactly the point: time takes away whatever measure of “good looks” we enjoy.  Jeremy Taylor, writing in the seventeenth century, put his finger on the issue. “First, age takes those parts that serve for ornamention.” Thus, “every day calls for a reparation of that portion which death fed on all night.” Each morning we have to repair the damage that was done the night before. As an old friend of mine says: “A little powder, a little paint, makes a girl seem what she ain’t.” 

And don’t think for a minute that men are immune to this compulsion. We too are appalled by what we see in the mirror, and each morning must give ourselves to restoration. But no matter what, the trend is down. It’s about time.

Those who have decided to follow Jesus, however, are not about time. The God of all grace has called us to eternal glory! (1 Peter 5:10). In the end, our bodies will be rescued from the tyranny of change and decay, and we will share in the glory that belongs to us as the children of God! When Christ is revealed, we will be revealed in everlasting splendor (Colossians 3:4).  If we could but see ourselves today as we shall be then, we would be left speechless in awe and wonder. (I must add, however, that then, we’ll not be self-conscious at all, but consumed with admiration for the beauty that we see in others.) 

In the meantime, though the outward person is perishing, we can invest in inward loveliness. The more we center on inner beauty, the less preoccupied we’ll be with that external glory that is inexorably fading away.  

Here’s the thing: What I hold in my mind will, in time, show up in my face, for as the old Scot George MacDonald put it, the face is “the surface of the mind.” If I cling to bitterness and resentment, if I tenaciously hold a grudge, if I fail to forgive, my countenance will begin to reflect those angry moods. My mother used to tell me that a mad look might someday freeze on my face. She was wiser than she knew.   

But in the same way, a generous and charitable heart, one filled with grace and forgiveness, will find its way to the surface—for goodness cannot be hidden—and show itself in kind eyes and a face that is gentle and wise.

So my task is not to try to fix my face and make it good (that would be hypocrisy), but by God’s grace and with His help set about killing the ugly things that come out of my heart—“so ugly that they make the very face over them ugly also” (MacDonald). No one but God can drive my self-centeredness away. So I must ask Him by His power to fulfill every desire I have for goodness. 

I have a friend, a Catholic priest, who served as Mother Teresa’s translator when she was here in the United States to address the United Nations. I was in his study one day and spied a picture of the two of them standing together on the streets of New York. I marveled again at her ancient, wrinkled, leathered, lined face, utterly unadorned. Wisdom had softened her face; character had drawn its lines. Gazing at those marks of courage and kindness, I thought: Is there anyone more homely—or more beautiful?

Hers was the beauty of holiness. May it be ours as well. 

David Roper

From The Idaho Statesman, 

Religion Column, 9.30.18