Ashes

It’s pretty surreal how something so horrible can, in its way, look so beautiful.  We have had the most incredible sunsets.  And yet at the heart of that is something so painful and broken.  My home is right at the front lines, so I’m not trying to belittle the situation at all, because I feel it acutely.  But as far as I know, no life has been lost, and this is the most precious victory.

What I keep turning back to is the passage of the bible from Isaiah 61 – where we are promised that beauty will come from ashes – that what was devastated will be rebuilt – that the end is a beginning.  And somehow in the midst of fire, I find a strange peace.

There’s a type of pine tree here in Colorado that needs the heat of fire to release its seeds and bring new growth to the forest.  The devastation was intended for evil, but new life turns it for good.  Let us hold on, in the midst of struggle, in the midst of unpleasantness, in the midst of devastation – to the knowing that good remains, that beauty remains, and that life remains.  I believe tragedy does not come as judgement or as testing from a God who is inherently good, but that this God can turn all things around.

All things can turn around.

(image via, text added)