God's perspective of your life -- He makes everything beautiful in its time

I read that if you look at what photographs you take, you’ll discover what’s important to you. Other than my two granddaughters, most of my pictures are of manicured parks, pretty buildings, flowers and floral arrangements I want to copy.

While I’m not sure that parks and flowers are what’s most important to me, they do delight and make me happy. I love beautiful things.

Think about the things you love and see as beautiful. Consider how you like to express and make things beautiful — whether it’s through the clothes and jewelry you wear, the home where you live, the garden you tend, the work you do or the food you prepare and serve.

Where do you go to see beauty?

Think about how beauty affects you, how it inspires and comforts you. We love beauty. We long to be beautiful and create beautiful things because:

God is beautiful.

God reveals Himself through beauty.

And the reason I’m writing today is:

God made us to be beautiful.

He reveals Himself through making us beautiful.

God makes beautiful things.

While pondering these truths, especially amidst the recent events in our nation and world, the words to “Beautiful Things” by David Gungor have been playing in my mind:

“All this pain, I wonder if I’ll ever find my way,

I wonder if my life could really change at all.

All this earth, could all that is lost ever be found?

Could a garden come up from this ground at all?

Chorus:

You make beautiful things; You make beautiful things out of the dust.

You make beautiful things; You make beautiful things out of us.”

This is exactly what God does! Amidst WHATEVER is going on in and around you, these words are true! God says:

“He has made everything beautiful in its time”

(Ecclesiastes 3:11).

It’s been our course since the beginning.

It’s been our course since the beginning, and it is life’s final destination for God’s children. In Revelation 21:3-5 (giving a picture of the New Heaven and Earth) God says:

“Now the dwelling of God is with men…He will wipe every tear from their eyes, there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. He who was seated on the throne said,

‘I am making everything new!’”

Our destination is sure.

But beautification is a process.

Even now, there’s a passing away of the old order of things, of the old man being replaced with the new creation God declares us to be (2 Corinthians. 5:17). It’s a process God is committed to:

“He who began the good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6).

The verse is clear: God has a plan to do a specific work IN YOU. It’s a process with an amazing purpose, one that enables you to reveal His beauty:

“For Christ to be formed in you” (Galatians 4:19).

It’s the process of becoming “mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13).

It’s the seasons of life that make us beautiful.

God explains a lot about the timing of this work in the first ten verses of Ecclesiastes 3:

“There is a time and purpose for every matter or purpose under heaven.”

The verses that follow list different seasons of life, including:

A time to weep and a time to laugh,

A time to get and a time to lose,

A time to tear down and a time to build up,

A time for war and a time for peace.

Can’t you relate?! Life is full of seasons:

Some we welcome;

some we resist.

Some we celebrate;

some we bemoan

Some we love;

others we hate.

I don’t have to tell you how the breaking of the seed’s shell and the dormant seasons in nature are essential to the crops that follow. We know this, but do we believe this in our own lives? Do you view your current season — whether you like it or wish you were out of it — as God’s ordained season to bring forth the incredible beauty of Christ in you?

In every season of life, God is working to make you more beautiful! He has a love-driven, grace-filled, exceeding-our-understanding purpose in every one.

Don’t waste your current season.

In Ecclesiastes, Solomon ponders how he wasted much of his life. He shares how futile life is when lived apart from God. My challenge to you is:

Don’t waste this season!

Enjoy all that IS beautiful in it.

Submit to what God wants to do in you.

Wait expectantly (in faith!) for the beauty God IS bringing out of it.

And as you wait, reflect on the beauty God HAS worked in you.

Every season can be beautiful because God is always creating beautiful things.

The last stanza of “Beautiful Things” speaks hope. I’ll let it be my closing words:

“All around hope is springing up from this ole’ ground,

out of chaos life is being found IN YOU.

You make beautiful things,

You make beautiful things out of the dust.