Friday, January 26, 2007

Beauty for Ashes

I have the most beautiful thing to share with you all. On myspace, I just added Shaohannah’s Hope as a friend. Then I looked through the blog entries and saw one entitled “Beauty for Ashes.” I’ve recently “re-found” the song “Beauty for Ashes” by Shane Bernard and Shane Everett and God has really spoken to me through it. I’ll share that later, but… read what I found from their myspace:




Thursday, January 11, 2007
Beauty for Ashes
-by Kerry Hasenbalg, from Voice of the Orphan

"The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me..He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted.. to give them beauty for ashes.. that He might be glorified." -Isaiah 61:1-3

The word "ashes" in the Bible represents great pain, sorrow, and even death. Those who have spent time walking in the fields of the fatherless, visiting the lands of the marginalized, or sowing seeds in the soil of the destitute have witnessed some of the greatest ash heaps known to man.

The Word tells us that Jesus Christ was sent to replace these ashes with beauty, and through working in the area of adoption, I have witnessed literally hundreds of lives completely transformed in this way. Where once were found lives mired in the ashes of miscarriage, infertility, and the death of children, there now can be found through the miracle of adoption the beauty and blessing of children. Where once we saw children's lives devastated by abuse, abandonment, and the death of parents, now we find happy children blessed with loving parents. In adoption the fearful become beloved, the scorned become adored, the nameless become cherished, the lonely become the laughing, and death becomes life abundant. In adoption ministry we can clearly see God taking ashes from here and ashes from there and making something truly beautiful out of it.

"See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland." Isa 43:19

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