The Road to Beautiful……

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. Psalm 23:4 NIV

Beautiful One, what will you encounter on The Road to Beautiful?

We all are on a road leading to somewhere. We started this life out taking baby steps, stumbling and falling down often, until we gathered our strength and were soon able to walk..

For some of us, we walked straight into beauty. It’s as if we were just destined to be successful, with no effort hardly, we walked into love, support and security and it shaped and molded our confidence that nothing would be impossible to us.

Then, there are those of us, who it took time, and a lot of it, to find our way into something beautiful. Sometimes we’re still like infants, stumbling and falling often. But just as a worm struggles and squirms his way out of a shell after a long arduous battle, we finally emerged with beauty and were ready to take on the world with brand new wings.

But whether we started out strong, or barely started isn’t the issue. It really doesn’t matter in the end what your beginning looked like. The Bible tells us that ‘the end of a matter is greater than it’s beginning.’ Ecclesiastes 7:8 NIV It’s not how well you started but how well you finish, or will you finish at all?

Sometimes in life you encounter people who just seem to have it all it together, great marriage, great kids, great job and a great sense of worth about themselves. These people leave you inspired and, scratching your head as to how exactly everything seems to just go their way. But I have come to realize that even though everything might appear outwardly great, these people are no different than you and I and none of us will ever escape the enemies within us and alongside us.

Sometimes, while walking on your road to beautiful, you encounter big bad wolves. Wolves that try to deceive and ultimately destroy you. These wolves can come without a moments notice. Here you are like Little Red Riding Hood, skipping along to grandmas house and whoosh, in the blink of an eye, out of the bushes jumps a ferocious animal who stops you dead in your tracks.

What do you do? You know where you are headed, but how do you get past this vicious threat standing right in front of you?

It’s simple……

You keep going.

Beautiful One, we will encounter many things on The Road to Beautiful, many of them being very ugly. A marriage that is broken and betrayed, a job that is lost, a child who passes away, an addiction that wont give in, an illness that lingers, a friendship fades. A church splits, a President falls, bills overdue, fear sets in, faith fly’s out the window. These are just some of the issues that we encounter everyday.

On the Road to Beautiful, no one is spared the agony and pain of indecision or bad decisions, mistakes are made, words are spoken and actions speaks louder than them all.

On this road we know where we are headed, but the journey from the starting point to the finish line gets blurred. There’s sun and warmth, as well as wind and storms along the way. Sometimes we can forecast it, other times we cannot and we are left to just deal with it, in the freedom of choice as to how we see fit.

Thats a scary thought….

Because depending on where we’re at, and how well we’re focused on the prize- the destination, we can easily be persuaded by the distraction of gnarling teeth standing right in front of us. Forgetting who we are because of fear, that we are only passing through, this is a season, not an identity.

How many times have we set out on course and been thrown off of it because we looked at the fear? We forgot that; ‘faith is being sure of what we hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’ Hebrews 11:1 NIV We don’t see our provision yet, but we know it’s there, by faith.

But, we do see the valley and the shadows, we do see the circumstances, and we can feel the worry, and the pain. We do see the wolves and we feel even more frustrated because we know we have to confront them before we pass through them.

Beautiful One, just because we face things that threaten to take us out, does not mean we are on the road to no where. We easily think that the Road to Beautiful is lovely, conflict free and without trials.

That’s simply not true…..

When Jesus took the road from the garden to the cross, he was on The Road to Beautiful, but it was an ugly journey. On his road, he was forsaken, betrayed, spit upon, beaten, mocked and ultimately killed. But, he arose victoriously and this beautiful God that we love made it possible for you and I to do the same thing,

…..to arise.

The road to beautiful will have many beautiful things on it, but there will be places, bumps and detours along the way we didn’t plan for. We will fall down, as well as get knocked down, but it’s OK, just get back up.

Always get back up…..

Beautiful One, just believe, because you are on the Road to Beautiful.

Shannon Heiden
changingonelifereachingmany.typepad.com