Beauty

For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven….God has made everything beautiful for its own time.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-12
 
King Solomon was very wise and picked up on some things that we are still trying to figure out today. In Ecclesiastes 3 he writes about the struggle of the good and bad in life. It seems like there is a time for everything and we cannot escape it. He says, there is a time for life and a time for death. A time for pain and a time for healing. A time to mourn and a time to celebrate. He covers a lot. Plainly put – life isn’t easy. It is full of beautiful and it is full of ugly. The trick – paying more attention to the beautiful than to the ugly.

One thing that strikes me in Solomon’s struggle is the way he just lumps everything together. There is no clear timeline, not clear delineation between the good things he lists and the bad things. It just all seems to be jumbled up together. When life gets messy like that it gets really hard to see the beauty in it. The tragic and painful always seem to overshadow the good. So, while we are in the tragic, we often find ourselves looking off into the future for the good to come. Its easy to get frustrated and stuck when we do that. Just sitting in the mess, waiting. Maybe even convinced better isn’t coming.

Solomon, however, is quick to point something out. He says, “God has made everything beautiful for its own time.” The way I understand that is in the midst of every season we can find beauty. Even if we are in the season of pain, death, lose, or mourning. Even in those times there is beauty – a beauty that God is there, present, and at work. God makes everything beautiful – even the most tragic and ugly. 

God has been at work since Genesis 1 bringing beauty out of darkness. At creation God took nothing and made it into something. It wasn’t just something – it was good. It was perfect. God took darkness and void and made it beautiful. If we pay close attention we are still able to see that beauty even though evil, sin, as made a mess of it. We see it, because God hasn’t given up on us. He is at work making things good again, making things beautiful.  That is what He does.

Jesus proves it. The cross reminds us of it. God sent Jesus to enter into our ugliness and save us. God sent Him here to make us beautiful again. We have this hope that better is coming because Jesus has come, because God entered into the darkness of our world to breath life back into our deadness.  He sealed that decision with the cross of Jesus.

God took the most ugly, painful, and feared method of torture and execution of the time and made it into a beautiful symbol of love and forgiveness. The cross today stands as a reminder that God can, and does, bring beauty, from our pain and suffering. God is with you today in whatever you are facing. Trust in Jesus to bring the beauty back. There is a time to be loved, redeemed, and forgiven – thanks to Jesus.

​Pastor Matt