Today is the birthday of a beautiful woman, Mrs. Rita, in our Wednesday night ladies group. Thanks to the magic of Facebook reminders, I remembered! As In went to post Happy Birthday to this sweet lady, I saw she is 88 years young. I would never have thought she was 88. To be quite honest, I never really thought about her age. Whenever I see her, she radiates her love for Jesus and for people.

This made me think about the lady that led me to Christ as a little girl, Mrs. Ferguson, but we called her “Fergie”. She is now in her nineties and we had the privilege of having lunch with her a year or so ago. She looked exactly the same to me. She told me the Lord hadn’t taken her home yet because she still knew people that needed to know Jesus. She radiated beauty from the inside.

When I think about these ladies that are way wiser than I am, I think about our beauty obsessed society. We spend billions of dollars on the latest cream , injection, and surgery to preserve our youth. We are an obsessed society full of double standards. Many of my friends and I have discussed how men in Hollywood get more “distinguished” as they age.  As women, we struggle with impossibly high standards of airbrushed images and distorted realities. it’s as if we “age out” of beauty by the world’s standards.

While thinking of these precious ladies in their 80’s and 90’s, I felt challenged by the Holy Spirit this morning. I remembered Proverbs 31:30, “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” These precious women of God have tapped into the eternal fountain of youth. They are beautiful from the inside and it radiates through them in a captivating way.

I believe we should do our best to present our best to the world. I want my husband to think I am the most beautiful woman in the world; that matters a lot to me. He affirms me daily, but he also tells me how much he loves to see me passionately serving God. It is attractive to him. I find it incredibly attractive to see my husband serving Jesus with all of his heart. The more he loves Jesus, the more I love him.

Ladies, I want to challenge us all to just quit beating ourselves up. God is much more concerned about your beautiful heart than your crow’s feet. He is more concerned about your peace and joy than your jean size. I pray that I can continually attain the true beauty of a woman; a woman that pursues Jesus with all of her being. See, that kind of beauty never fades away. It just gets better with age.

Courtnay Aycock