appearances on Youth

The flower of youth never appears more beautiful than when it bends toward the sun of righteousness.

“When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that Sarai was a very beautiful woman” (Gen 12:14). What is considered beautiful is one of those things that often goes without being said. Sarah was about...

The Texas-based pastor Matt Chandler spent a decade working with teenagers, and during that time, he realized how a specific change takes place between sixth graders and ninth graders. As Chandler say...

So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why doesn't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women?

The author Oscar Wilde once remarked that by the age of forty everyone has the face they deserve. This is a truly profound, if painful, truth. But it really applies to the “within” expressed by the fa...

After surveying an incredibly diverse cross section of college students across America, Donna Freitas found “the most pressing social media issues students face: the importance of appearing happy”—and...

A sure way of retaining the grace of heaven is to disregard outward appearances, and diligently to cultivate such things as foster amendment of life and fervor of soul, rather than to cultivate those ...

One Ash Wednesday a decade ago, when I was new to Anglicanism, I knelt at a rail as Fr. Thomas, my priest, smeared a black cross on each forehead. “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall ret...

Chan eil breth le nochd; beairteach cridhe dh’fhaodadh a bhith fo bochd còta. Do not judge by appearances; a rich heart may be under a poor coat.

AIM Commentary Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? A Gospel for a Jewish Community Matthew’s Gospel presents a favorable view of the Jewish Law and its traditions. In...

It is not your outward appearance that you should beautify, but your soul, adorning it with good works.

I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.

Be not proud of race, face, place, or grace.

It is a spiritual disaster for a man to rest content with his exterior identity, with his passport picture of himself. Is his life merely in his fingerprints?

It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.

Though beauty gives you a weird sense of entitlement, it's rather frightening and threatening to have others ascribe such importance to something you know you're just renting for a while.

Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level. It’s cheaper.

Appearances can be deceptive. The fact that we cannot see what God is doing does not mean that He is doing nothing. The Lord has His own timetable. It is we who must learn to adjust to it, not vice ve...

No physical appearance is worth not eating pasta for.

Max Lucado shares a funny story about a phone app that was supposed to be able to guess your age. It worked by taking a picture of a person’s face and then spitting out a supposedly accurate result. L...

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? A Gospel for a Jewish Community Matthew’s Gospel presents a favorable view of the Jewish Law and its traditions. In contrast to Luke...

The world has enough women who know how to do their hair. It needs women who know how to do hard and holy things.

Many minorities actually try to change their appearance to look more light-skinned or white. Eliza Noh, assistant professor of Asian American studies at California State University of Fullerton descri...

Some people's affability is more deadly than the violence of coarser souls.

I was shy by nature, and rendered worse in that respect by a consciousness of my own ugliness. I am certain that nothing so much influences the development of a man as his exterior—though the exterior...

Watches, cars, and Christians can all look chromed and shiny. But watches don't tick, cars don't go, and Christians don't make a difference without insides. For a Christian, that's the...

The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.

[God’s grace is] always hidden under the strangest appearances.

“I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!”

Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is and the tree is the real thing.