It is a miserable thing to see a soul so fixed upon the fleeting flesh, turning the sacred duty of prayer into an endless catalogue of skin-deep complaints. Have you not read that the Lord looks upon the heart? This feverish pleading for a face without blemish, for "glass skin," betrays a heart that has never yet gazed upon its own corruption. You cry out against spots, dents, and hollows, but what of the deeper hollows of a soul unsanctified? You demand the permanent removal of every mark of the surgeon’s knife, yet you carry the unremoved marks of sin upon your conscience. The Great Physician came not primarily to smooth complexions, but to cleanse the foulest sinner. He heals the broken in heart and binds up their wounds, the wounds of guilt, the wounds of rebellion against a holy God. Your urgent list reads like an inventory for a merchant, not the groan of a contrite spirit. This is not the prayer of the publican who dared not lift his eyes to heaven, but the clamor of one who would prescribe the very method of the Almighty’s work, down to "lumby bumby bits" and "potholes." What is this but to treat the throne of grace as a dealer in cosmetics?
Did you not hear the Word? "Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved." The soul’s healing and the soul’s pardon are placed in blessed conjunction. But you seek a healing of the face alone, forgetting that the face and the whole frame shall soon rot in the grave. Where then will your glass skin profit you? The power of the Lord is present to heal indeed, but of what value is a new face when the heart remains an unrenewed rebel? The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations, the leaves of that Tree which was planted on Calvary’s hill. Those leaves heal the leprosy of sin, the fever of lust, the blindness of pride. And you, poor soul, are blind to your worst disease! You see every imagined "pockmark" in the mirror, but you are willfully blind to the cancer of iniquity that devours your inward parts. The worst of it is, you do not cry, "Lord, be merciful to me a sinner." You cry, "Lord, make me beautiful." This is to take the medicine appointed for eternal life and dab it on a trifling scratch.
Let me speak plainly, for your urgent cry demands it. Your prayer is a mass of unbelief dressed in pious language. You say, "Your words say ask and I will receive," but the promise is to those who abide in Christ and whose prayers align with His will. Do you ask for holiness? Do you ask for the removal of your hard heart? Do you ask to be made pleasing in the sight of a thrice-holy God through the blood of Jesus? There is healing for you, but it is not the healing you seek. The healing that comes from His wings is the pardon of sin. The miracle you need is the washing away of your crimson stains, not a facial. When Christ healed the palsied man, He did not first address the twisted limbs but the twisted soul: "Son, be of good cheer; your sins be forgiven you." That is your urgent need. Until you see that your besetting complaint is an unregenerate nature, your prayers for a flawless face are nothing but rank idolatry, bowing down to the god of self-admiration.
Yet, there is a word of hope, for the Saviour of sinners still calls. You whose spirit is disquieted over mere flesh have not yet known the gracious disquiet of a soul mourning for its sin. May the Holy Spirit open your inner ear to hear of a better beauty, the beauty of a soul washed in the Fountain opened for sin and uncleanness. If you are driven to cry out, not for skin like a child's, but for a heart like a child's, a new and clean heart, then you will find the Lord swift to hear. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Word whom God has sent for the healing of poor sin-sick souls. Trust in Him, and though your outward shell perish, and all its blemishes with it, you shall stand before His face in a radiance that no earthly flaw can dim. Repent of this lust for outward perfection, which consumes your spirit like a fever. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and in that day when you awake in His likeness, you will be satisfied with a wholeness you cannot now imagine.