Our lives weren’t meant to be formed on an assembly line. There will be bends and turns, times when everything seems opposite of order. Yet from a higher perspective, our Creator observes and declares, “It is good.”
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Consider the trees. There is beauty and order in each, and yet…in a natural setting they are not lined in perfect rows. Their branches are bent and twisted, growing every which way, yet still forming something…beautiful.
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Everything which would seek to steal beauty from this world and joy from our lives is compost for the greater things to come. Every tear is a seed sown, the ground watered for greater things to come. All the horrors of history, all the tragedies of today are nothing compared to the glory God will one day reveal.
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Yes, there is suffering. Yes, there is evil. Daily, we’re bombarded with news we’d rather shut our eyes and ears to. Yet still, there is beauty, tenacious beauty. Where there is beauty, there is hope. And if there is hope, there is reason to live.
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God will not always calm the storm, and he won’t always extinguish the fire. But His word says that you will seek Him and find Him when you seek Him with all your heart. If we seek him in time of storm or fire, we will find him there. And if the only hope we have is to know that he is with us, it is more than enough.
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As the disciples welcomed Jesus onto their boat, and as the exiles bid God to meet them in the fire, so we have the opportunity to welcome him into our storms and our fires.
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I can’t tell you that God will grant you a life free of storms. And I can’t say you’ll never go through the fire. But I can tell you one thing: He will be with you in the midst.
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This Life & Beyond 
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