Beauty from Ashes

 

Daily Gratitude Year 12 - Day 104: Today, I am grateful for the beauty from ashes.

"Satan loves to take what's beautiful and ruin it. God loves to take what is ruined and make it beautiful."

The battle for our souls is real. The enemy of our soul wants us to feel ugly, broken, and unloved. He wants us to feel ruined.

Like the Japanese art of kintsugi, repairing broken pottery with gold, silver, or platinum... it becomes more beautiful in its broken, mended places at the touch of the Master's hand.

As a little girl, I fell in love with "The Velveteen Rabbit" by Margery Williams. I think it is where I first discovered that children's literature could speak great truth.

“Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'

'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.

'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'

'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'

'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.”
― Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit

You can never be ugly again. That is how we are loved. He wants to trade beauty for ashes. 

"To all who mourn in Israel, he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair. In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks that the LORD has planted for his own glory." - Isaiah 61:3

Be brave. Be real. Be willing to "make the trade."

Today, I am grateful for the beauty from ashes.