Beauty for Ashes

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday...Approximately forty days before Easter Sunday. The begining of Lent, a time of fasting, repentance and purification...
As I made myself ready for work yesterday and realized it was Ash Wednesday, I began to think, beauty for ashes. These three words have given me much comfort and peace over many years. The first time I have these words highlighted and dated in my Bible reads 6/16/05...close to ten years ago. I even had an official license plate that read "BTY4ASH".
Isaiah 61:3, "To all who mourn in Israel , He will give beauty for ashes, joy instead of mourning, praise instead of despair. For the Lord has planted them like strong and graceful oaks for His own glory."
Beauty for Ashes...I got ashes, you got ashes, all God's children got ashes. For me, ten years ago my heap of ashes came in the form of a dissolving marriage. My world had been turned upside down and I was struggling just to get back on my feet again. I was one messed up girl. I felt like I had been burned to a crisp!
When God revealed these Words to me, they were my hope. I began to think that in the midst of all this burning and somewhere in the heap of all these ashes there had to be some beauty somewhere, somehow, at some point. The beauty didn't happen overnight unfortunately. Oh, if we could just go to sleep for a while and wake up beautiful, right?! It was a process, a refining process, a slow process, a long process that continues as I type today.
One of the things I learned through this process is this: In order for God to give me beauty I had to give Him my ashes. I couldn't hold onto them. I had to trust Him with my ashes. I had to give Him my pain, my broken heart, my broken dreams and every heap of ashes I could see. I began, little by little, give it all to Him. I walked through a lot of hard stuff. He began to reveal ashes I didn't even know existed. I realized I could either keep my ashes and continue lugging them around, spilling them every where I went, or I could give them to my God and believe Him for the beauty He promised through His Word. The choice was mine. I admit, so many days I was tempted to keep them... sometimes we can find comfort in our ashes, can't we? We want to wallow in those ashes and sit there immovable. On days like those, I had to remind myself almost every moment that these ashes were not meant to stay...they were not my identity, and ask God to help me part with them. His Holy Spirit at work in us is faithful and able to do infinitely more in us than we ever thought or imagined possible (Eph 3:20).
I wish I could say that divorce was the only heap of ashes I've had to give to God, but it's not. I've had many things in life that I've been burned by. I'm sure you could say the same. Life is unpredictable. Life can be downright difficult at times, it may seem like everywhere we turn sometimes that there is a torch waiting. Because of that, I think we can find hope in these Words spoken through Isaiah. We can choose to give God our burnt places, our mistakes, our pain, our broken dreams, our heaps of ashes and choose to trust Him to give the beauty.
I am reminded of what we use to do with the ashes from our fireplace growing up. Mama wanted us to shovel them into a bucket then take them out to her rose garden in our backyard. They became the fertilizer for the beautiful roses that would eventually bloom in the spring. The ashes of winter fed the spring flowers. The ashes are never wasted! The ashes from our cold winters are what fertilizes the garden God is planting in us also. The things He wants to grow in us are actually fed from the ashes. Wow! to think that without the ashes we may not grow as much nor bloom as beautifully...
This takes us to the last part of the previoius verses..."For the Lord has planted them like strong and graceful oaks for His own glory." Our good God doesn't just want us to survive, He wants us to thrive! To live life strong and graceful for His glory. The ashes we give to Him, He takes and uses them to give us strength and grace to display His glory. That's what I call amazing GRACE!!!!
I don't know what you face today or what you have faced in your past, nor what either of us will face in our future. I don't know what your ashes represent, nor how many heaps have piled up through the years. All I know is that those ashes can actually bring new life. They are the fertilizer for the beautiful roses and the graceful oaks.
We have to go through the mourning process and receive His joy. We have to choose to make the sacrifice of praise instead of despair. We have to give Him our ashes. We have to choose to part with them, to no longer find comfort sitting in them. We have to allow our awesome God to take them from us, to use them in the garden He is planting to give us new life, to bring forth something beautiful. Something that displays His greatness as the Master Gardener, the Ultimate Planter...to become living proof that He can indeed cause all things to work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.
As we begin this season of Lent, may we not just start a fast, but may we also start a search...Let's take a look around, see any heaps of ashes? Don't hold on to them...Don't waste the fertilizer...There's a beautiful garden ahead.