Beautiful Savior, You died to make me beautiful —

one who was marred and made beastly by sin.

Late it was that I loved you, beauty so ancient and so new, late I loved you!

Thus, I vacillate between a monkish contempt of physical beauty

and a worldly addiction to physical beauty.

Unlike the patriarch Job, some of us have made a covenant with our eyes

and we still gaze lustfully at others with whom we are not married.

Forgive us O LORD!

Most of us compare ourselves to others

and feel insecure, ashamed, and envious.

Have mercy upon us O LORD!

Some of us have a disdain for our bodies that You knit together and fashioned.

Liberate us from such bondage O LORD!

Many of us have grown up lacking that precious sense

that we are beautiful in the eyes of at least one loving beholder.

Give us a sense of Your delight, acceptance, and favor

through Jesus Christ our LORD. AMEN.