“Why can’t you see yourself as beautiful as I see you?”

These Avett Brothers lyrics have been playing over and over in my head the past few weeks. It makes me think of a couple of things. One, I feel that these are the lyrics God sings to us. I feel like he longs for us to see the beauty in ourselves - that is God’s own image. He sees us for what we were meant to be and it has got to kill Him (literally) to see what we’ve done to His image. His image has been distorted in us because of the Fall, but there is hope in the fact that His image is there. And if His image is in me, the worst of sinners, then it is also in the homeless man, the violent teen, the drug dealer, and in each team member.
That brings me to the second thing. We must see others as beautiful so that they too can see themselves as beautiful. If we are to fulfill the second most important commandment as stated by Jesus (Love your neighbor as yourself…), then we must see the image of God in everyone we meet. Not just in the good things or good characteristics of these individuals but in everything about that person. For I believe God is always present, so we must refuse to see the muck but to see the beauty so then we can recite these lyrics to the man who has given up. I truly long for us to see each other as beautiful as God sees us.