Beauty for Ashes

The word for ashes is epher and the word for beauty is pe’er, and they carry the same three letters set in a new order. And that word for beauty is not beauty in the air somewhere. It is a headdress, a turban, a crown for the head. Now think where ashes were worn. On the head, in mourning. So He takes the mourning sign off the head and puts a beautiful one in its place. And here is what I see in the letters. God did not go and find beauty somewhere else. He worked with what the fire left.

I was so blessed by the Word today, as I listened, I realized that God was preaching another sermon to my spirit.

The Word that was shared opened my eyes to see beauty for ashes in a deeper way. Isaiah 61:3 says that God gives beauty for ashes, and the joy of that promise is that He does not leave us identified by what we have gone through.

The ashes are real, they are evidence that there was a fire, a process, and a season of suffering and loss. And Peter puts a purpose on that fire.

Though it be tried with fire. They prove that something has been endured, they are what the natural eye sees. But God sees beyond the ashes.

And here is my picture. When fruit is placed through a juicer, the world keeps the juice, and the rest is thrown away. The one evaluating today would say the fruit had suffered loss, for so much of it was cast off. But turn that around, the very stuff that is thrown away is what God uses, and it is what we ourselves come to evaluate about what we have gone through, for the ashes that to some may represent failure and humiliation, to us represent life. And Job said it about himself.

When he hath tried me. Job does not say the trying was pleasant. He says what he will come forth as. So it is with God’s work in our lives.

There are seasons when we look at what remains and feel as though we have suffered loss. But God is the Refiner, and Malachi says so.

He shall sit. Now Malachi is speaking there of the sons of Levi being purified to offer in righteousness, and I am the one carrying it over to us. What I take from the sitting is that He is not in a hurry over it, and that what looks like loss to the natural eye may be God preparing something else.

And that is what I am reaching for in this. The pain is not the testimony. His grace is.

And here is how I hold it, and Isaiah does not put it in these words. The ashes prove we went through the process, and the beauty proves that God brought us through it.

I know this for myself. My grandson was diagnosed with something in 2021, and you see him now, and I do not see the marks of it on him. I am telling you what I have watched with my own eyes, and I am not going to tell you what God did or did not do inside it, because that part was not shown to me. What I believe is that grace was in it. The fire was real. The ashes were real. And when I look at him today, what I see is not the fire. What the fire consumed is not greater than what God restored.

And read where Isaiah himself lands, because he does not stop at the crown. Trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, THAT HE MIGHT BE GLORIFIED. The beauty is not the end of it. He is.

Beloved, if you are still standing in the ashes today, lift your eyes. Isaiah says He gives beauty for ashes, and I believe the God who has been merciful to my house is able to do it in yours. Let us worship the One who gives us beauty for ashes.