The Making of Beauty

Humans. We are broken. We are a mess. We are hurting. But when God gets ahold of our hearts, something beautiful happens. He takes what was broken and restores it. He takes the mess and sorts it out. He takes our pain and turns it into joy. This is, The Making of Beauty. 

One of my favorite verses, and the inspiration for this blog, is Ecclesiastes 3:11. "He makes everything beautiful in its time." The fascinating part of this verse is the "in its time" part. This means that God has a time for each beautiful thing to be revealed. He doesn't do it all at once. We don't get to choose when it happens. 

There have been ugly parts of me that I have asked God to make beautiful, and sometimes He has done it quickly. But most of the time it has been very slow. Sometimes nothing seems to happen for a long time. Then one day a breakthrough happens and I look back and see all that God had been doing and how it is all coming together into a beautiful work of art. 

So what can we do when we come across something ugly within ourselves? 

We can seek Him 

We can trust Him 

We can follow Him

Seek Him

Seeking God is having a heart that is open to God. It is admitting our brokenness to Him, asking Him to change us, and then accepting His will for us. It is also seeking to know God's character. God is beauty. If we want to become beautiful, we need to know what beautiful looks like. 

Trust Him

Trusting God is giving our desire (in this case, to be changed) over to Him. It does not mean trusting that God will do what we want. It means trusting that He is working. It means trusting that He will do what is best with what we have given Him.  

Follow Him

We pray and pray for God to do something and often He responds by asking us to do something. Many times we stay in the same place because we want God to do something, but then we don't do what He ask us to do. I don't mean that God refuses to do things for us if we don't do things for Him. What I am saying is that sometimes God is waiting for us to take the fist step. One of the awesome things about God is He patiently waits for us. He continues to orchestrate things in our life to direct us to Him and His will for us. He keeps giving us opportunities until we get it.

I know sometimes I am a little slow. I don't always get it the first time. But that's ok. 

God loves me 

I am His

He is patient with me

He is working in me

The most beautiful thing about life is watching God take something ugly and make it into something beautiful. Many of the entries on this blog will be a place for me to record and share The Making of Beauty in my life.