A Noble Idea

Sometimes, when I was little, they would use this expression.
And they would say --Don't be ugly to each other-- And by this they meant
stop being hateful toward your playmates, stop pushing yourself to the top, always fighting to self-promote, to step on someone else.
Because it's ugly, it's the stuff of humanity's shame, the mark of the fall.
And I like this expression because it equates ugliness with evil, with sin against one another.
And this in turn associates beauty with love, redefines beauty as being where love is.
And isn't that the beauty and wonder of our God? His unfailing, never-fading love.
A love that he would lavish on us if we would only let him.
That would make us beautiful like he is beautiful.
Would make us like him.

And this, I think, is a noble idea to plant in the mind of a child...