Beautiful mess

    When I was little I used to look at life through the eyes of a child, and in those eyes the world was perfect; life was perfect. In my small mind I could not comprehend how a world so beautiful could be so wicked. Now, I understand. Shortly before I went to Zambia last year I went through a stage where I was so disgusted with the world that at 17 I was already done with this life and looking to heaven. There was even a time when I thought I did not want kids because I didn't want to bring them into a world like this. (I no longer think this. Now I want many children, to raise up Godly offspring to serve the Lord!) I thought this world and all in it was ugly. I was looking at the world through the eyes of a faulty and selfish human being.

     Then God stepped in. He stripped me of all I thought I knew of the world and radically changed my life. In the beautiful country of Zambia my heart was torn and bled for those people, and it was there that I learned to see beauty in the midst of all the ugliness, love in the midst of grief and healing in the midst of pain. As the tears fell from my eyes and my heart ached, I began to see God's heart for the world. I saw that life is not all ugly even in the midst of great tragedy. I was there to help those children yet unbeknownst to me, they were the ones who helped me.  I learned to love in a way I've never loved before; to grieve with the grief stricken, to cry with the hurting and laugh with the joyful. I learned to see joy amidst pain and likewise how to see God in the sorrow. Through those people I saw the good in the world and the Father's hand at work in this life. I now look at life through Christ's eyes. Through the eyes of LOVE.

    Yes, this world is a big, ugly mess, but life is in fact beautiful. It is the individual not the world that makes their life beautiful or ugly. This world is marred with sin and hatred as Satan lurks in the shadows seeking to kill and destroy, but the people of this world are beautiful beyond compare in the eyes of God. No matter how evil or how righteous they are, they are still loved by HIM which means we too need to love them. Life is a mess; a mess of many emotions, troubles and blessings. Life is a cherished mess, a beautiful mess. 

 "Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not of more value than they?"

 Matthew 6:26

"For the glory of God!"