Beauty has more depth when it comes out of destruction.
This is something I have been learning this month in the Philippines.
Many of you are aware of the Typhoons Yolanda and Ruby that destroyed the lives and homes of several people here in the Philippines. Lives were ended. Homes were destroyed completely. Buildings collapsed. Roads torn up. Everything flooded. Essentially, the Philippines was a victim of great destruction.
But oh how God can make deep beauty from great destruction!
I met a woman who told me she was thankful for Typhoon Yolanda. This struck me as an odd and largely crazy statement at first. How could she be thankful for a disaster that literally destroyed the country she calls home? Because…it was Typhoon Yolanda that brought her mother to seek and come to know Jesus Christ. The beauty of her mother’s soul being reunited with the Father and headed to eternal glory one day is undeniable.
I ate meals in our ministry host’s kitchen each day on a beautiful, long wooden table. The words “The Lighthouse” are engraved on the side. There are matching wooden chairs, stained and glazed that fit around this beautiful table. Come to find out, this table and chairs were made from an uprooted tree from Typhoon Yolanda. These people literally used a destroyed tree to create a beautiful table in which missionaries can eat off of to nourish their bodies in order to nourish the body of Believers.
The people of the Philippines have that thing that I think a lot of us miss out on in life, especially in the Christian life. Instead of drowning in self-pity or blaming God for destruction, they find a way to see the beauty in it. To be able to look upon a trial and find beauty is something that I think is more spiritual than cultural. When we love God, we trust His goodness and His desire to give us good things even through trials and destruction.
God makes beauty from ashes, day after day.
The Philippines has opened my eyes to that more and more.
