HOW TO WIN A BEAUTY CONTEST

Do you want to be beautiful?  Then be a friend. You will not wear the sash or the tiara, friendship is not part of the criteria of a Beauty Pageant. 

Friendship creates an inner beauty for both the giver and the receiver. Mrs Robert Browning, the poet, inquired of Charles Kingsley,’ what is the secret of your life? Tell me, that I might make mine beautiful, too,’

Kingsley replied, ‘I had a friend,’ he then proceeded to tell his story.

As a boy in boarding -school he was in the depth of homesickness. With his coat collar turned up, he walked around the campus on a wet, dreary, stormy day.  He was lonely and discouraged.  Then he heard a friendly voice say, ‘Walk with me, lad,’ and the Professor extended his umbrella.

Instantly the homesickness vanished and Charles Kingsley was happy and hopeful once again, glad to be in college. Life was smiling at him again.

The boy over the succeeding years remembered what the Professor did.  In fact, many times it seems that the Professor’s umbrella was still over him when times of doubt and difficulty arise.

What is friendship? It is feeling completely natural with another, shedding all pretense and sham, just being ‘you.’

It is sharing with another being the big and little things, sorrow and joy, laughter and tears.

It is counting on another to understand your moods, put up with your failings, and be there when you need them most with a word of encouragement, a smile and a look.

Friends do make our lives beautiful and we can make the life of others beautiful by being their friend.  It is a popular thought that if you want friends then be a friend.

How do I know what friendship is? I know because I have discovered a friend who sticks closer than a brother.  And that is the person of Jesus Christ.  ‘Greater love has no man than that he lay down his life for a friend,’ Christ said. Jesus did lay down his life for each individual in the world.  My Greatest Friend laid down his life for me. A  Friendship with each of us is important to God.  Jesus opened the door to the throne room, allowing those who believe and accept him to enter that great room of power as a son and a brother rather than someone facing judgement.  What a friend.

It was God’s best kept secret for thousands of years until he decided he wanted children instead of friends or servants or people who served him dutifully.  As God said, ‘all those who receive me, I will give them the right to become my children’. All we must do is accept Jesus as our mediator between us and the Father and hey Presto, we are children of God.  God does not dwell amongst us any more as in the day of the Old Testament, he dwells in our innermost part.  We wear the sash and tiara of sonship on an equal basis to Jesus Christ.

The question is, have we been made the Children of God? Do we accept that God has made us into his children whom he loves. Have we asked him into our innermost being and accepted the sash and tiara of sonship for eternity through Jesus?