Beauty. We all long for it. We long to see beauty. We long to have beauty in our lives. We want to be beautiful and we want to be seen as beautiful. The chorus to my favorite song goes like this: “Hey now, this is my desire. Consume me like a fire, cause I just want something beautiful to touch me. I know that I’m in reach, cause I am down on my knees. I’m waiting for something beautiful.”
We are all waiting for something beautiful to blossom. In the midst of messy situations, pain, loss, mistakes and broken hearts, we are waiting for something beautiful to take root. Even an ounce of beauty in an ocean of trouble, provides a glimmer of hope and the promise of something better.
We serve a beautiful God. He is the only one that can take a mess and turn it into a masterpiece. In Greek mythology, the Phoneix was a bird that arose from the ashes of it’s predecessor to be reborn. God does something similar with us. In the midst of pain and sorrow, loss and grief, mistakes and screw-ups, God enters the scene. Into the most hopeless situation, He breathes life. As a result, just when we think we can go no further and that we can’t bear to go on one more day, He causes us to rise up again from the ashes in His strength. Through our struggles He makes us stronger, enabling us to look more like Him and equipping us for all the bigger things He has prepared for our future. As it says in Isaiah 61:3, He bestows on them “a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning and a garment of praise instead of the spirit of despair.”
I want to speak to all of you who feel like you are standing in the ash heap, entangled in a web of lifeless situations. Put your trust and your confidence in Jesus. He is the God that carves beauty out of sorrow. He is the God that makes everything beautiful in it’s time (Eccles. 3:11).
