LOOKS AREN'T EVERYTHING

One morning last spring I took this picture of a 15 year old pear tree in our front yard. It was beginning to blossom on schedule - which got me to thinking. 

The tree looks great in the spring, but it has yet to bear even one pear - and if we were counting on the tree to produce fruit, we would be in trouble. It doesn't provide much value, except for some temporary blossoms. 

The tree reminded me of a book I read recently called "The Life God Blesses" by Gordon MacDonald.  In it he uses an effective illustration of a ship builder, who is more concerned about the ships' appearance than what is below the waterline.  Turns out the builder cut corners "below the waterline" on parts of the ship that no one could see. And on the ships' maiden voyage, a storm arose and the ship was destroyed.    

Guess you could say some in the Hollywood crowd are like the shipbuilder.  They spend a lot of time and money looking good on the outside, but sometimes under the surface their lifestyles seem to get messy and more than a few seem to produce, well; not so much good fruit.

Yesterday I watched a TED TALK where a model mulls over what it means to be beautiful. To her, being beautiful is a matter of chance; she happened to be one of the people in the world born with a set of physical traits — height, femininity, shiny hair — that our cultural views as attractive. And while her beauty has been a cornerstone of her career, she has very mixed feelings about the doors it’s opened for her. She said, “I’ve gotten these free things because of how I look, not who I am. “And there are people paying a steep price for how they look, not who they are.”

I guess (a moment or two from now) when we reach the end of our life - how we looked on the outside won't be a big deal, at least not nearly so big a deal as much who we were on inside.