In light of our last devotional about Lot’s wife, I went through the archives to find a series I wrote a two years ago called “Beauty for Ashes.” Here’s part one. Enjoy.
I looked at the mess on my floor and in my closet and wondered when I had become so disorganized. It isn’t like me to allow my closet to exist without it being color coordinated with all of my shoes lining the top shelf. And yet, here it was, a messy closet and a disorganized room.
If I had access one of those huge trash containers, I would throw my whole room in there. The closet too. I just wanted everything done and away. I had no desire to sift through each pile, fold and color code or put each item in its respective place. I just wanted it all done and done. Can you relate?
Perhaps you’ve had an experience similar where you’ve been emotionally cluttered. Your feelings, fears, and hopes littered around your inner walls. When life seems to unfold our emotions through difficulties, it is challenging to look at the heaping mess in front of us and start, piece by piece, and clean it up. Making the first step was always the hardest.
We struggle with doing hard emotional work because it exposes our weakness and heightens our vulnerabilities.
In this study series “Beauty for Ashes” I want to talk a little bit about what I know of ashes and a lot about what I know of God. I’ve learned, most recently, that there is beauty in the ashes and after that There is nothing that God allows to touch our lives that doesn’t have some type of plan for redemption embedded in it. Though we struggle to see it and recognize what God views as beauty, it is always there.
If you are in a season of mourning and you have lost something (a dream, a hope, a relationship, a home, etc), or you have lost someone (a parent, a friend, a relative, a church member, etc). I pray you find God in the ashes because He is always waiting for us there. God removes things and people from us in challenging ways, but the removal makes room for Him to work, heal, and bless.
As the author of our faith, He blends pain and suffering into joy and healing which is why we must believe that God will use every single thing we’ve been through for His purpose and our redemption. His goal is to draw us closer to Him and refine our hearts like pure gold. He is the God of order, and even in seasons of devastation and death, God is there mending and tending to our pain as a gardener tends to a bed of delicate plants. He is always with us replacing what we’ve lost with blessings that will bud in due time.
He is always there rebuilding what was torn down, especially when it’s been us.