Beauty From Ashes

By Becky Pico

The fire came, scorching hot and overwhelming,

devouring everything in its path.

Lives and dreams ravaged by its merciless appetite for destruction. You stand there staring down at all that is left,

a pile of ashes to represent the great loss you’ve experienced.

Then you feel it on your face, a slight breeze,

coupled with the familiar warmth of the sun.

The breeze picks up a bit, and over that pile of ashes

you see movement.

Something stirs in your heart for a moment.

The movement of the wind catches bright pink blossoms

from a nearby cherry tree, dancing, then whirling above the ashes, round and round it waltzes.

And as it whirls, it coaxes new life

from the ground beneath those ashes.

A hopeful, small shoot of pale green springs up,

right up in the middle of all that death, and grows upward,

as it follows the beckoning petals,

joining them as they rejoice in the day.

This is what He does, what only He can do, what He has promised.

Don’t despair.

He creates beauty from ashes,

and makes everything beautiful in its time.

His Spirit hovers over that pile, as it did

the very great deep and darkness in the beginning of time.

See, ever since then, He has worked with things

that were without form, an empty waste.

He formed and fashioned and created, working all things together, bringing life, where there seemed to be none.

You do not hope in vain.

Watch as The Creator, who loves you with an everlasting, limitless love

brings beauty from these ashes.