I was recently looking at pictures of our house when it was first built, back in 2003, and then, this year.
The first picture is pristine, with fresh paint, new sod, and no hint of what the elements can do to a blank canvas.
Our house had not yet known a storm. It had never been the backdrop for falling leaves. Never been blanketed by snow, or pelted by summer hail.
It knew only newness.
But this yearβs picture tells a different story.
A richer one, I think.
There are trees now, their branches casting shade where once there was only unfiltered sun. The landscape has softened and matured.
No longer untouched, everything still, somehow, seems more beautiful.
I couldnβt get away from it, the difference.
The living parable.
The way class is always in session.
The photos reminded me that pristine isn’t necessarily pretty. That there is a beauty that only time can create. A beauty developed by seasons and by storms.
It is the kind of beauty that simply will not be, otherwise.
Over the years, growth has resulted.
And along with it, character.
The same is true of us.
We wish we could go back to the unmarked versions of ourselves, before disappointments and losses, before the winds that buffeted and the rains that soaked us.
But maybe God is up to something different in our lives. Maybe He is growing something deeper.
The storms we fear and would avoid if given the choice, often become the very things that deepen our roots the most. They increase our reach. They make us a place of shade and rest for others.
They unveil our purposes and employ our gifts.
After all, few go through life unscathed. We lament that fact, but, in Godβs economy, it is something we must learn to receive, even if we never fully embrace it.
The untouched will never know change. It is the weathered things, the weathered ones, who have stood through seasons and storms, that become the most beautiful.
We long to preserve what has been. God longs to transform what will be. He most often does that by shielding us within the storms, not by preventing them entirely.
And when we look back years later, we find that our fears were unfounded and our avoidance, unnecessary.
We see with fresh eyes that the marks did not mar us at all. They became the places where Godβs grace took deepest root, forming the basis for the beauty and usability He was crafting all along.
He is faithful to redeem what He allows.
So, we hang in there with Him, trusting that every wound will one day testify to His faithfulness, His compassion, and His power to craft beauty from the things we would never choose but cannot avoid.
βHardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.”
~ π.π. πππ°π’π¬
βFor I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”
ππ¨π¦ππ§π¬ π:ππ