Beauty From Ashes
Have you ever been in the midst of an extremely hard time and run smack dab right into beauty? It happens. It feels offensive, almost. We don’t know what to do with it.
Walking in this life is living in tension.
We are children of God living among lost people.
We are citizens of heaven who temporarily live in a fallen world.
We hear and see the hand of God all around us, and we also see the effects the enemy of this world has on it.
We have dual citizenship. John Eldredge says we are amphibians. We live in two worlds, and we need both of them to survive.
The above reference is from this amazing book, which Taylor and I are reading.
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One day, on our mission trip to one of the poorest areas of the world, we went from huts in the bush where the people were rich if they owned a chair, to the house of the first lady of the country. There, we had feasted on the fanciest meal I have ever been invited to. It was so hard to make sense of the extremes. The hard reality of the poorest of the poor is the tension of the wealth of others. Looking back, I can see the beauty in the ashes of that day. But in the midst of it, it felt rather offensive. Now I can see beauty in both places. But at the time, I was struggling.
When we are in hard places, it is challenging to see the beauty. We don’t want to adjust to it during pain. That is ok. We need to process grief and disappointment. We have to permit ourselves to be where we are.
But it is helpful when we are a bit more removed from this intensity to take time to look back at those beautiful moments that come from the intense pain. There is beauty in the pain. There is growth that eventually comes from hard seasons.
We had bushes we planted that never really grew for 3 years. They just stayed exactly like they were when they were planted. It seemed so odd to me. They were living but not growing. One summer day in TN, we had a huge storm. The wind was atrocious.
But do you know that after that storm, our bushes finally started growing! They began to thrive. It took that wind shaking up their roots to make space for them to grow.
It is hard to walk through the hard place. They aren’t fun, and they can be painful. But do we want to exist and never grow? Are we satisfied with the status quo, or would we rather be flourishing?
Friends, if you are in the midst of a struggle right now, I would love to pray for you. Let me know in the comments. Just know that despite the struggle (or attack), God can use this to grow you. I want to encourage you to look back at a previously hard season and consider how you grew from that place.
And if you aren’t in one…don’t start bracing in fear of another. Let’s all keep our eyes on our Father and trust that He “works ALL things together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28
