You're beautiful.

"No I'm not," you say.
But, you are.

You are beautiful whether you believe it or not.

God is the author of beauty. He is beauty itself. So, if He created each one of us, how can we not be beautiful? We have been so blinded and deceived by society's definition of beauty that if we aren't a size 0 and weigh 12 lbs., we don't think we're beautiful.

Forget what society says. They've been deceived, too.

I was reading Jesus Calling by Sarah Young for July 3 and it made me think. The part that awakened my thoughts reads:

My children make a pastime of judging one another - and themselves. But I am the only capable Judge, and I have acquitted you through My own blood. Your acquittal came at the price of My unparalleled sacrifice. That is why I am highly offended when I hear My children judge one another or indulge in self-hatred.

Imagine you have purchased a very expensive painting, painted by a famous painter. Maybe it's a 

Van Gough or a Picasso. Maybe the painting is the infamous Mona Lisa. Say you have spent your life savings on this painting, because you thought it was so beautiful and you loved it and had to have it. How would you feel if I came along and said that the painting was the ugliest thing I had ever seen? How would you feel if I painted over it to try and make it better, or put slash marks through it because it was so ugly? You would be angry and offended, right? 

But isn't that what we do to Jesus?

He spent His life to purchase us, yet we constantly try to fix ourselves through surgeries or enhancements or through eating disorders and self-harm. We get so hateful towards ourselves that some even take their own lives. And, to make things worse, we cut each other down, too. We judge and criticize and make fun of others, all at the expense of the One who bought them with His blood. We offend Him.

What would happen if we began to see ourselves as the valuable beauties that we are? 

YOU are royalty (1 Peter 2:9). 

YOU are beautiful (Song of Solomon 4:1)

And who are we to argue with the Creator? With the One who bought us with His blood?

Isaiah 45:9-10

"Woe to him who strives with him who formed him, a pot among earthen pots! Does the clay say to him who forms it, 'What are you making?' or 'Your work has no handles'? Woe to him who says to a father, 'What are you begetting?' or to a woman, 'With what are you in labor?'"