All things beautiful

Every time I hear the song “How He Loves Us” I think of Cardboard Testimonies. For South Bay’s 1 year anniversary service, Archie sang that song while over 20 people filed across the stage holding up their cardboard testimony. On one side there was a phrase that captured the brokenness of life. Pain. Disappointment. Broken dreams. On the other side were words that displayed God’s redemption of each situation. The way He pierced through their darkness with His light. His life breathed on what was thought dead. Hope among the wreckage. 

• Turned my back on God 15 years ago - God never turned His back on me
• Widowed with 5 young children - He is the Father to the fatherless
• Drug dealer - pastor

I play the scene over and over in my head. He makes ALL THINGS beautiful. It’s the “Ugly Beautiful”. The “brutiful” part of life.

I feel like I’m walking across that stage again white knuckling a piece of cardboard. Only this time just one side has writing on it:

“Suffered a miscarriage after 5 1/2 years of infertility”

Pain. Disappointment. Broken dreams.

But I know that I will flip the cardboard one day. I don’t know what’s going to be written on the other side. There’s no clear vision in my mind of how God will redeem this pain and make all things beautiful. But I know He will; that’s just what He does.

Brokenness? Yes. Hopelessness? No.

There are too many people around me with their cardboard testimonies, trophies of God’s glory, for me to believe I’ll be left stranded with only a one-sided story. Plus, I’ve got a whole closet full of my own scraps of cardboard to remind me of the faithfulness of God.

Beauty is coming. For me and for you. I don't know what's written on the unfinished piece of cardboard in your hand, but there is a faithful God who is in the business of redemption. He will never leave you forsaken on the stage of life with only a one-sided story. He makes ALL THINGS beautiful in His time.

South Bay's cardboard testimonies from February 2010