Putting Things into Perspective

One cannot deny that getting in a wreck, at any time of the year, stinks. But getting in a wreck the night before your birthday? Talk about a kill-joy. I rear-ended someone with my car last night and dealt significant damage to my own vehicle. I’m alive, and no one was hurt, so I am very thankful for that.

I hit rock bottom last night when I got back home. After everything I’ve gone through since I’ve gotten back from FUGE, why this? One more issue/problem piled on top of the mountain of obstacles I’ve had to overcome. I lamented the damage to my car and, more specifically, the potential cost to fix it.

This morning my mother helped put things into perspective: metal can be repaired or replaced. Lives can’t.

The situation could have been a whole lot worse. No one was hurt in the accident, and the people I ran into happened to be people I knew well, and they were very gracious towards me in light of what happened, despite being justified in being upset with me if they so desired to.

In light of everything that happened, I move on from this incident with a fresh perspective on life, and a renewed determination to overcome and grow through whatever is thrown at me.

“Consider it a great joy, my brothers, whenever you experience various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. But endurance must do its complete work, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.” ~ James 1:2-4 (HCSB)

Beauty in Brokenness

The idea that God would send Jesus to the earth to live a perfect life and then die by being nailed to the cross in order to take the place of the hideousness that is myself and my sinful nature is nothing short of beautiful.

We use the word “beauty” freely and often in our culture. We use it to describe a variety of things, whether it’s a dress, or the way the landscape looks, or the sunset, or a person; our definition and usage of the word beauty is broad. But what does it mean, really? We typically only use the word ‘beautiful’ to remind of things that are physically attractive, but what if the word goes much deeper then that?

We’ve all heard the phrase: “Beauty only goes skin deep.” When I refer to beauty, I’m not referring to that, and I’m going to avoid that phrase and meaning here. I’m talking about something much, much deeper then you or I could properly comprehend.

Let’s talk about beauty from a different perspective: God’s. When you see someone who you define as “beautiful”, I think its safe to assume that God sees something totally different. Not just because God sees that person’s heart…God sees their nature.

We have a broken, sinful nature. And it makes us all ugly. True human beauty was destroyed in the garden, when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit: original sin.

The act of Jesus dying on the cross restores that beauty, and the symbolism behind that death is, in itself, beautiful. Think about it. What do YOU think of when you see the cross? Redemption. Freedom. Salvation. Repentance. Victory.

The cross is intended as a torture device. Before Jesus died, the cross was a symbol of death. Instead, after Jesus died upon it, a torture device became a symbol of love. Similarly to the way that a cross went from a symbol of death to a symbol of life and love, we ourselves went from the personification of death…to being a visible mark of His work.

Beauty, truly, is found in the exchange of His life for our redemption. It is found in the complete brokenness that is our sinful nature being transformed into an image molded by the hands our Maker.