GLITTERY

 Okay, let's get this straight, right off. I'm not much of a glitter girl. I tend toward warm, soft, and comforting textiles and surroundings. Not that I didn't once wear something glittery. I think it was a blue formal my mother sewed for me when I was in high school orchestra. In those days, girls wore formals for concerts. (The tradition of all-black concert dresses hadn't come yet to my high school.) Since I didn't go to the school dances, that was my chance to “dress up.”

 But that was then. Even when I got married at 34, my home-sewn wedding dress was simple—just satin. No sequins, pearls, or anything flashy. So when my husband recently brought home from a yard sale a big can of sequins, beads and other decorative crafts, I said, “How much?” Meaning, “What price do you want to ask on Craigslist?' He knows I'm not much into crafts and saw a re-sell possibility there. A few weeks later, somebody did call and buy the whole can.

 My “coolness” toward glitz probably reveals a lot about my personality. No frills. Practical. A few little wants, but basically okay with the “basics.” I'm a minimalist for makeup. Utilitarian haircut. All-purpose clothes that date back years (if not decades). This quote from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice resonates with me: “All that glitters [or “glistens”] is not gold.” Some think he picked up the phrase from a 12^th century French monk or from the fabled Aesop of the same century. It showed up again in the 1878 Gilbert & Sullivan comic opera HMS Pinafore. But it expresses a universal truth: that looks aren't everything.

 Even the Bible has its version of this. In the Old Testament, Israel was itching for a king. Its judges weren't good enough. Israel wanted a monarch like the pagan nations around it. The winner of Israel's “beauty contest” for its first king was Saul, who was described as “an impressive young man without equal among the Israelites—a head taller than any of the others” (1 Samuel 9:2). He didn't even know there was a contest to anoint a king, and when his time came was out chasing runaway donkeys. Of course, the rest of the story was that Saul descended into decadence and ineptitude.  Finally, God chose a new king—an unlikely youth who tended sheep and played the harp. But David (unlike Saul) showed that he was a man after God's heart (1 Samuel 15:16).

I applaud the God-fearing youth pastors and Sunday school teachers, noble Christian teachers (especially in public schools!), and other adult role models who augment (or, sadly, must replace) the life modeling of parents and other family members. Our culture tends to exalt the glitter: the music and media stars, TV luminaries, beauty queens and stellar athletes with little second thought to their spiritual fiber. They may have the “glitz,” but it won't sustain them their entire lives. What Isaiah said centuries ago still rings true: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Isaiah 29:13).

 The apostle Peter saw the same problem, and offered this non-glitzy alternative lifestyle for Christ-followers:

Live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. (1 Peter 3:8-9)

 Such a lifestyle isn't very “glitzy,” but it's genuine. And that's the way it should be.