The Ugly...What?

My son was given a book the other day. It was a story that is pretty classic, but I hadn’t heard it in a long time. He brought it to me and asked me to read it. The Ugly Duckling.

As I read it I realized that I really liked the story. The gist of it is that a swan egg gets stuck in with a bunch of duck eggs. When the eggs hatch there are a bunch of cute little ducklings and one grey looking one. The other animals on the farm all make fun of it calling it the ugly duckling. One day it runs away and sees some swans and wishes it could be beautiful like them. When it is all grown, one day it looks at its reflection in the pond and realizes that it is a swan. After that it is accepted among the other beautiful swans and has kind of a happily ever after type ending. But something occurred to me as I read it. He was called and ugly duckling, but the truth is, he never was a duckling.

So often we try to fit in to this world. We try to be what is expected of us. Some people preform just to get the approval of others. Some don’t even try because no one expects anything great from them. We try so hard to be what we think we are supposed to be, but often times we are missing the point. We are trying to be something we are not. We strive to be human-like when God calls us to be like Him.

As we stumble about like babies trying to learn how to walk the way our Father walks, people look at us and point out how different we are. We don’t look like, talk like, act like, sound like the others. But one day our TRUE nature will be revealed (Romans 8:18). We will emerge as His beautiful people (Isaiah 62:3).

Maybe sometimes the reason we don’t look like others is because we just aren’t like them. God gave us a new identity. His. We look like Him.