Faith is believing everything becomes beautiful

​I think as a way to use humor to combat the endless parade of hardships and challenges and unprecedented times that have come with this year, 2020 has become it's own punchline.

I've followed the weather news this weekend. Parts of the Gulf of Mexico will experience two hurricanes in a matter of a couple of days this week. Normally, this would seem unfathomable. But the collective response seems to be - with resignation - oh, that's just 2020 acting up again.

I guess personally, I've had a lot of 2020's in my life. This year just seems to come with different flavors of hardship. But I tell people all the time, the mind and the body and the heart - they don't know the difference between one hardship and the next - they just sense and feel burdened. They feel the weight of trying to adapt to and survive what life is throwing at them.

I guess in many ways, I feel like I've spent a great deal of my life preparing for 2020. And my hope isn't in knowing I survived those years leading up to this one, my hope is in seeing what God created out of them.

There are some beautiful words in the 61st chapter of Isaiah:

“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives, and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion - to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes."

Beauty instead of ashes....

I have some ashes in my life. But as I look back, they are no longer ashes. The ashes I once felt buried in are now beautiful works of art. All I can see are the times in my life where God took those ashes and drew pictures of hope and with them wrote stories of redemption.

I look back on those ashes and hear the echoes of me pleading with God - help me overcome. And in those echoes I can FEEL God's answer more than I can hear it. I feel the strength of a faith that says life isn't about overcoming, it's about living with a trust that everything becomes beautiful.

Not EVEN the ashes, but ESPECIALLY the ashes.

As challenging as life is - and you are no joking matter 2020 - I continually remind myself to ask the right question. My right question isn't when will this all end, when will life get back to normal, when will this cloud of ashes finally move on. My right question is, oh what beauty God are you making out of this one.

I don't know for sure how hard things will get. I don't know for sure how long this will go on. The only thing I really know for sure is one day I will look back and say, God, what you did there, that is truly beautiful.

You truly do place on us a crown of beauty instead of ashes.