Out of Ashes

 

“[The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord] has anointed me… to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.”

—Isaiah 61:3

Sometimes it feels like all we have left to give the Lord are ashes. That which we had—that which seemed to be the best offering we could produce—has been burned and now gone. All we have to offer our God is brokenness and the burned up remains of a well-intentioned life.

We can find various stories of the lives of people who thought their world had ended, but then went on to do amazing things despite the burned out remnants of something seemingly lost.

Consider Beethoven, a man with the keenest sense of hearing, who composed exquisite music, but suffered complete deafness when he had so many songs yet to give the world. Despite the extreme loss, he composed the most well known and loved symphony, his Ninth, while totally deaf.

Think of Joni Earecksen Tada, a young girl with a promising knack for painting, who loved sitting next to her artist father with her crayons and imagination, dreaming of producing wonderful pictures. Then, she experienced a horrible diving accident, spent months in the hospital, and ended up a quadriplegic. She could have never known what God saw in her future, of the magnificent works of art created by colored pencils held between her teeth.

To Joni, and many others with severe limitations, these verses from 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 must ring very true:

“But he [God] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Maybe something you depended on to give you the means to serve God has been taken from you. Maybe the dreams you had have vanished like smoke. Even so, be aware that God’s plan never gets thwarted. He wants to give you beauty for ashes, and hope where you have despair. He is able to produce in you something of His design.

Stay faithful, and you will soon see the beauty develop in ways you never imagined!