Grace makes beauty out of ugly things

Spring is almost here! Okay maybe not in Maracaibo, Venezuela where we live in endless summer...haha. But I know that back home in the states, the snow is leaving, the grass is growing, and flowers are blooming. Its probably my favorite season because I can see such great testimonies of God's great power, beauty, and love all around me. I miss Spring. I miss looking outside of my window and just thanking God for his beautiful creation. Lately, I've been having a hard time trying to find that here in Maracaibo. There's not a lot of grass, mainly concrete, usually broken. Lots of dirt and trash. More so than just the physical aspects, lately its been hard for me to find beauty here in Maracaibo. I just feel overwhelmed by the ugly things the growing problems of insecurity, their loco president, and all of the craziness that's involved with living in a city. After some much needed quiet time, I realized that I've been looking at these situations with my eyes, instead of God's. I've learned over the years that as we seek to become more like Christ, we lose a lot of ourselves in the process. Today God was really wanting me to change my perspective and to start seeing the world around me through his eyes. Though the world, might label my new surroundings as "third-world", and others might say "ugly", I have to choose to look beyond what's there at the surface and see the beauty that God has intended for it. Also known as: grace. The greatest image of grace that we have in our lives is Jesus Christ. I mean if we read the entire bible until the arrival of Christ we see that Israel has been largely unfaithful to God. They've mocked him, ridiculed him, replaced him, and forgotten him. If you look into the history of the Hasmonean kingdom before the time of Herod you learn how they sold, bought, killed, and tainted the office of High Priest in the temple. I even remember what my life was like before Christ. I chased after lesser gods and I thought that I could control the world around me and be successful independent from God. I might have well just slapped God in the face and told him that he wasn't needed, that he was nothing. Even after all of that, God chose to look past and forget all of the times that we rejected him, all of the times that we mocked him, and we belittled him. He looked past all of our sin-filled hearts, he saw us for who we truly are and sent his one and only son to earth to be a living sacrifice for our sins. So, that we can be with God again; even though we didn't deserve it. And that's what grace is making the ugly beautiful once more. My lesson for the day: How quickly we forget to share the grace that we have been shown.

What once was hurt, what once was friction
What left a mark no longer stains
Because grace makes beauty out of ugly things
Grace finds beauty in everything
Grace finds goodness in everything - U2