My mother was well known for her chocolate cakes. They were always so moist and flavorful with a butter cream frosting that seemed to be the work of angels. She liked to top off her creation with pecan halves that she placed on the confection with the greatest care. Her cakes always sold quickly at church bake sales. There was even a time when her chocolate delight fell apart while traveling in her car.

She almost went inside empty handed but decided to let the women in charge of the sale decide what to do with the accidental demolition of her masterpiece. As she was sheepishly entering the church hall a man spotted her and announced that he wanted to purchase her cake before it even hit the table with all of the other goodies. At that moment my mother admitted with great embarrassment that the cake was not up to her usual standards because it had shifted on the car seat while she drove from her home. To her surprise the man insisted that he wanted her cake regardless of how it looked. “I have eaten your chocolate cake before and once I cut into it I no longer cared whether or not it looked beautiful. I knew that the taste would be out of this world I don’t want your cake as a decoration. I want it because I know that it will be yummy.” 

I’ve always remembered that moment as a kind of fable with a lesson about life. It’s not so much how something looks that makes it valuable. it’s always about how wonderful it is inside its core. Such can be said about people as well. The superficialities that drive the cosmetic world might create attractive folks but the true worth of an individual lies in the beauty of the heart. 

I’ve written before about a student of mine who had been so grossly disfigured by a fire that she might have been viewed as a monster. I myself cringed when I saw her walking down the hallway on the first day of school and silently hoped that she would not be assigned to my class. I feared that I would not be able to look at her without showing my horror at what had become of her. Of course, she headed straight for me and innocently smiled with an announcement that she was going to be one of my students. 

In that brief moment everything changed. She was confident and self assured which took me by surprise. I would have imagined that someone so disfigured would be timid but she had an air of confidence that immediately changed the way that I had been feeling about her. In fact, she turned out to be one of my all time favorite students mostly because she never seemed to be thinking about herself. She was so kind and loving that none of the students poked fun at her or seemed to be reviled by her appearance. Over the course of the school year I began to see her as beautiful. Somehow what was inside her soul transformed the physical horror that had deformed her. In the process I know that she also transformed me and her fellow students. 

We live in a world that can be very superficial. All too often we let our first impressions of people determine how we think of them. Studies have shown that we humans often choose pleasant looking people over those who are not as lovely to view. We can be quite judgmental of someone who is awkward or somehow unattractive. iI is only after getting to know the personality of a person that we begin to see the real presence of the soul who is before us. It is in the moment when we see the content their hearts that we are better able to judge what kind of person they really are. 

Stereotypes abound around us. It is far too easy to assume the character of an individual by appearance alone. We all know someone who is gorgeous who has a selfish heart. At the same time we encounter homely souls who radiate beauty when we get to know them. As the content of their character becomes apparent they seem to become more and more attractive. At least that is how it mostly goes if we are willing to know them beyond the obvious aspects of how they look.

My husband has beautiful hands while mine are stubby and seem to have always been wrinkled like an old person. I laughingly call them my grandma’s hands and tend to keep them by my side rather than drawing attention to them. I am not ashamed of them but I know that they are not my most striking feature and yet there was a moment when a friend grabbed one of my hands and proclaimed that it was beautiful. As I gazed back at her in disbelief she explained that my hands looked like they had done many jobs that nobody else might have wanted to do. She proclaimed that they were the hands of someone unafraid to dig in the dirt or scrub a floor. She felt that all of the wrinkles were like badges attesting to my willingness to labor for others on this earth. 

I am thankful that there are still many people who see beyond first impressions. There is nothing wrong with being a truly beautiful person both inside and outside. I have met many such souls but at the same time I have witnessed the true attractiveness of kindness and generosity that comes from the heart of a soul. Such a person needs no surgery or makeup to be gorgeous. They are as delicious as my mother’s chocolate cakes and fabulous to be around. True beauty resonates from the inside out. We would do well to get to know someone before making judgements about what kind of person they are.