Beauty for Ashes

This one phrase in Isaiah 61:3 has really been speaking to me lately.  From what I read, this is what I have found it to mean.  When people were in mourning, they would put ashes on their heads.  The Redeemer said that He would come and take those ashes and give them beauty (a word there is no translation for in our english language...but seems to mean some kind of beautiful head dress, tiara, etc.).  So the Lord would come and trade out their ashes for a tiara.  Ah...I like the sounds of that!  He will give me a tiara...a princess tiara...for I am a daughter/princess of the heavenly King!!

I find such great comfort in knowing this.  How many times have I personally "mourned" plans that I had made for my life.  Let's see...I was going to be a mother by 25...well, that did not happen as planned.  I truly mourned those plans, but what did the Lord do...He gave me BEAUTY for ashes!  Elly is truly my beauty...my tiara in this case!

I look at my life even now and see some of the ashes I still heap on my head thinking that the Lord cannot turn them into beauty. 

Weight...seems I have struggled with it all my life.  Can He make my weight struggles a thing of beauty?!?  You bet He can. 

When I come to the end of the day and I look at what I have accomplished...which in my mind seems to be nothing...I begin to heap the ashes of my best laid plans of that day on my head and mourn for what I could have done or should have done.  He looks at me and says "my child...let me turn those ashes into beauty."

I also find it interested that it is not beauty from ashes...but beauty FOR ashes.  He does not take the ahses of my failed plans and make them into something else.  No He tells me He will take my ashes and He will GIVE me beauty in return.  Who would want to buy a rebuilt car when you could have a new one...or who would buy something refurbished when you could have one that is new!  I will take NEW any day.  I don't want something that was broken down and now fixed...I want the brand spanking new one!

So...when I find my day did not go the way I wanted...when I fall off the wagon again with controlling my weight...when other things in life do not go the way I have planned (never planned on being unemployed last year), He says "BEAUTY FOR ASHES my dear...that is what I will give you."  What a wonderful promise!