Saturday, November 10, 2012

Making Beauty Out of Sadness


“It takes a person with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.”
— Clive Barker
The mocker and the scoffer will mock and scoff at what is written here, but a tried and tested eternal truth rests in these words. There is beauty to be made out of sadness, not the least of which contact is made with the Spirit of God; that ethereal part of us that wonders within the mysteries and enigmas of life.
The real substance of life is not known through happiness or material bliss or certainties of success. The real substance of life is known only through the processes of hardship, of self-denial, and of the character-refining work that the mature must do in order to become mature. There is no shortcut to maturity. But there is beauty there and there is beauty to be made out of sadness.
What Is This ‘Beauty’ About?
How, exactly, do we make beauty out of sadness?
In utilising an unorthodox method within the midst of our sadness, we do not fight the discouraging and despairing feelings that bristle within us. In a very plain sort of courage, we take our truth—that which has caused us the sadness—and we do two things.
The first thing is we admit it, and its disparaging effects. We don’t deny it, or get ashamed, or get angry about it. We simply get real about our feelings. The second thing we do, at the same time, is we rest in the truth. This can really only be done when we surrender before God.
When we are real about the truths in our lives, and we can rest in those truths, we have suddenly found we are relying on God. This is what trusting God means. Being real about our sadness and not railing against it forces us to consider what help we need and have available to us.
This help we need—this help we have available to us—is God.
In the process of reaching inward in quiet moments of discouragement and despair we draw near, and God draws near to us (see James 4:8).
What occurs from this drawing near process is beautiful.
It took a mature heart to do this work, to initiate and complete the transaction of surrender before God. It takes a mature heart, also, to appreciate the beauty found as a result of obeying God in this way.
***
The Presence of God is saved most of all for the soul prepared to make beauty from their sadness. This person goes to God and seeks guidance. They draw near. And they find what they are looking for, when they are honest in their sadness and when they rest in that truth.
God makes beauty out of our sadness when we rest in, and rely upon, Him.
© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

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