One of my former youth group students is Laura McKeeman of Celebration, FL. In the five years I’ve been here with you, Laura has gone onto win Miss Florida, married Josh Rutledge of the Boston Red Sox, and become a reporter for ESPN. Here’s a quick blooper real of her:
http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=espn:13022220
This past week, she got to play some part in the Miss America pageant. I know that beauty pageants can be the subject of demoralizing women, but any contestant or supporter would argue that it celebrates beauty as one of many other important ideals like intelligence, grace, style, and talent. Talent, which lately has caused a stir in the media when Miss Colorado performed her talent by describing her nursing profession. The ladies on The View, which is a fairly popular talk show of women discussing a variety of subjects, made a comment that nursing is not a real talent. This comment erupted a firestorm of backlash from women, nurses, and the general population. The View has since apologized for the comment. Yet, it reminds us that culture still tends to stereotype beauty as surface only with no real depth. How can we blame culture? Advertising and the modeling industry have statistically proven that although culture thinks very shallow with regards to beauty, they are still duped by the “buy this and you’ll be like me” mentality. It’s one of many ironies that you and I live by.
Yet, if we pay attention to women like Laura, or Miss Colorado, or Esther…we would soon realize that there is a beauty that goes deeper than appearances. A beauty that is selfless, kind, and self-sacrificing for the betterment of society and culture.
There exists a certain irony in the Bible that spills over into our lives. Irony is defined as an event or current state of affairs that seems deliberately contrary to what we’d expect. The last being first, a servant being master, salvation by self-sacrifice, and on and on. Irony is woven through our life’s tapestry; and is deliberately humorous in culture. How will you perceive and apply God’s daily ironies in your life this week?
