Looks Do Count!

“I’m so ugly!” I said to my mother as we were walking to the store one day. I was around eight years old at the time.

“Looks don’t count!” was my mother’s response. She was trying to teach me good values.

She was right, but she was wrong.

She was right in the sense that one’s outward appearance is not what matters as far as a person’s worth. My parents had good values – they believed it is a person’s character that “counts.”

God says has the same value, “…man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart” (I Samuel 16:7).

God cares about who we are as people – our character. And that’s what we should care about concerning others.

However, the first part of that verse,” Man looks on the outward appearance” is true. People do look and judge from our appearance, so it does count for something. If people have a certain “first impression” of someone, they might not take the time to get to know them.

Like it or not, our appearance speaks. It says something. It might say, “Hipster, nerd, business man, rich, poor, artsy, sleazy…”

Seeing that how we present ourselves, says something, what do we want to say?

I have known people whose appearance says one thing, but then when I have gotten to know them, I find that that is not who they are. They are different from what their appearance portrays.

For those of us who know Jesus, we want to represent Him appropriately. Happily, there is not just one kind of “look” that does that – God’s children are different and we can express ourselves differently. But how we do choose to appear – from our clothing, to our smile (or lack thereof), says something to people.

It is what is in your heart, that counts the most.

But looks do count, so I want to be intentional in how I present myself.

At the same time, it is important to realize that when we look at others, we shouldn’t judge by appearance. We can’t really tell what a person’s character is like by how they appear. Although my mother was wrong in one sense, she was also right.

The above was a heron I saw while walking in a park by the water. I stopped to look at it, because after all, herons are more rare than seagulls and geese. Then this heron moved and stretched out and I gasped! Because, this:

The second photo is the same bird as the first photo! The very same bird went from looking dumpy to looking elegant. Nothing about who the bird was changed. His capabilities, his habits, his tendencies remained the same. Only his appearance changed as he stretched himself out. 

When you see someone, don’t judge them by how they appear. It doesn’t tell us very much at all about who they really are. Their looks shouldn’t count.

But as for yourself – as for myself – let’s take care to think of how we want to appear, even something as simple as putting on a smile, because, to some extent, looks do count.