I have been reading (slowly) through the book of Isaiah, and this morning I read chapter 53. This chapter is a prophecy about Jesus, and I have heard some of the verses from this chapter quoted during the Lord's Supper many times. This morning, something in verse 2 jumped out at me. It says, "For he shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him." So I decided to do a google search for images of Jesus, and here are a few that I came up with:
Do you notice something about all these images? They all depict a tall, thin, attractive, caucasian-looking man with long flowing locks and a perfectly trimmed beard. But that verse in Isaiah says "He has no form or comeliness" and "there is no beauty that we should desire Him." So I was wondering, what did Jesus really look like? Did He look ANYTHING like these images that we have created of what WE think He should look like? What if He was bald? Or had crooked teeth? What if He was short and stout? I think He probably was not what many of the Jews were expecting a Messiah to look like. Maybe that's part of the reason why He was rejected and mocked by so many in His day. Another thing about Jesus: He wasn't born into a royal family or even a family with high social status. He was a carpenter's son. Mark 6:3 says, "Is this not the carpenter, the Son of Mary, and brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? And are not His sisters here with us?' So they were offended at Him." I guess some people couldn't understand how someone so plain and who came from such a humble backgroud could possibly claim to be the SON OF GOD. But if God had made Him rich and beautiful, do you think He would have been able to minister to the poor, wretched, and outcasts of His society the way He did? God is God, so He could have done whatever He wanted, of course, but I think He made Jesus the way He did for a reason.
I Corinthians 1:18 & 27-28~ "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God...But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are."
Anyway, just some thoughts I was having that I thought I'd share. Hope you're all having a great day. If you have any other thoughts or scriptures that would go along with this feel free to share.
4 comments:
Do you find it as intriguing as I do that these posts never get the comments that other ones do?
yeah, I was kind of wondering if I had posted something offensive.
I think most people in general comment less and less now--but I think that the Thursday Thoughts or any post that is spiritually minded gets a lot less commenting on it.
Personally, I hate when Jesus is shown as a blue-eye blonde white man. He was born in the Middle Eastern areas, so he was probably a little dark-skinned with dark hair and brown eyes. That's my own image, though... I just can't picture a blonde, blue-eyed guy in the Middle East.
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