2093) In my 60 years, I’ve learned there is a beauty that is beyond any other thing on this earth than when it shows up in pain.  

There was the man sitting on the ground with his arms wrapped around his dog, crying tears of love, because he had to take him in to the vet to be put to sleep.  

There’s the man in the room next door in the emergency room who came in with a heart attack. His doctors and nurses worked frantically to save him, but they lost. The medical team gathered in the hallway afterward, crying for a man they didn’t know.  

There was a great man of God sitting across the table from a young girl, who was struggling to believe she mattered. She looked up at him through her tears and saw tears on the man’s face because his love and care for her was so great.  

Isaiah 61:3 tells us because of the gift of God’s son and his death in our place, there’s a great beauty that arises from the ashes of the destruction of things on this earth.  

Because such beauty comes from such pain, it can be tempting to turn your head and not look but think of all the beauty you would miss.  

Pain will be destroyed one day, and God’s children will see only beauty for eternity.