Yet even in the middle of being awe-struck by beauty, I felt the presence of our ashes. From this pre-dawn vantage point, I could not yet see most of the destruction that took place here just three weeks before, from which we will be recovering for a long time.
In Haywood county, we are living with beauty and ashes side-by-side.
The Prophet Isaiah speaks of the Lord giving “a crown of beauty instead of ashes.” (Isaiah 61.3 NIV) His audience was grieving the destruction of the promised land. In 2018, our new Archbishop Steve Wood and his congregation began walking the long road of re-building behind the phrase “beauty from ashes” after their ministry center burned down. We need to know that destroyed things can still be made beautiful again.
But seeing the beauty and ashes in Haywood County every day begs for a very Christian response: holding them together. In our resilience, let us not minimize or compare our losses — if we do not grieve the ashes, we will forever sit in them. In the overwhelm of houses caked in mud and mold, let us not overlook our clean-out buckets that have somehow found their way there from Alabama, or Ohio, or Tallahassee, or Spartanburg, or Dallas, NC. As we care for those around us, let us sit with them when they see the beauty, and let us be willing to sit with them in the ashes.
Hold together the beauty and ashes of our moment – it is a very Christian response because it is what Christ does. Jesus carries the same tension for our whole world until he returns again. He celebrated the beauty, grieves the brokenness, all while stepping into the middle of it and infusing more and more beauty into it.
Look for Jesus today in the beauty and in the ashes.
