He'll let beauty overgrow the barren

I dreamt up the picture I thought I would see and I stepped into the house.

We went back and forth from the house and the yard to the trash pile.  And every time I returned, this ray of yellow dancing in the wind.

You can't describe the feeling in that air.  It was heavy.  It was holy.  It was brokenness being made whole.  I know I was breathing it all in.

And I stopped, because among broken despair and a children's bedroom that was empty, the Lord would choose to let these flowers grow rabid.

Hope in the storm.  Whisper in the winds.  Joy in the barren.  Roots when the dearest of your heart is ripped out and thrown far away.  Beauty amidst junk.  What You are to me.

Because I walked into that bedroom and my eyes filled with tears.  Two beds, clothes everywhere, we were there to clean up, yet somehow God touched a deep part of my heart with this room.  It was trashed - literally trashed - but I knew the laughs that were missing and the voices that were gone.

And then you haul another bag to the growing pile and you cry again because the grass withers and the flowers fade but the word of the LORD stands forever.  And they understand that.

And suddenly I get it... if He would so much as plant flowers in this junkyard to remind our souls, then how much more is He doing with what we can't see?

That if He would make a vow to them, He has the ability to allow these flowers to overgrow the junk.  Both the seen and unseen.  That when things like, "I haven't seen that in fourteen years" are said, you know the things inside that haven't been brought to mind in fourteen years are coming to surface, too.  There's beauty in that, because the God we serve heals.  And He always wins.

There is beauty in the barren.  When you are stripped raw to the bone, allow Grace to grow like flowers.  When you are ripped at the seams of the burdens we carry, allow Love to make you new.  When you are captured by despair, allow Truth to open your eyes.  Look for the flowers, because they will be there.  And smell them.  Sit and stare at them.  Relish in the fact that despair does not win.  Because dancing in a corner in the heavy parts of your story, flowers there will be.  And remind yourself, an Unswerving Love is on our side.

And always, always, always trust your heart to be ruled by the One who gives you this hope.

Our God.  He'll let beauty overgrow this barren road we walk.

Read more...