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The second reason I’m a Christian is that I believe God can and does bring good out of any situation.  Even the most broken.  This is not something I merely believe with my head…it rumbles deep inside of me and has been an anchor in ways I can’t explain.  Gungor names it perfectly in their brilliant song Beautiful Things:  “You make beautiful things out of the dust;  You make beautiful things out of us.”

I could tell you story after story about how Shauna and I have seen God enter into the saddest heartbreak and darkest disappointment to bring healing and use it for good.  Really.  I could tell you a number of ways that God has used my deepest brokenness and sin to turn it on its head and create beauty.  Really.  It’s stunning and humbling and unexplainable apart from God.

Chuck Colson was recently speaking about how God used his time in prison (for being a part of the Watergate scandal with Nixon) to redirect him into the most exciting, liberating, and fulfilling years of his life.  God used that tragic scandal to lead Chuck into the adventure of a lifetime, and bring hope to thousands of prison inmates through his Prison Fellowship.  Which is why Chuck’s story built in passion and volume…and he eventually erupted into the beautiful declaration of “Thank God for Watergate!”

What is your Watergate?
Are you able to thank God for it yet?
What might it look like to let God begin the painfully holy work
of making something beautiful out of it?

This has been soooo difficult for me, and I do it poorly, but glimpses of “redemption in action” in my and my friends’ lives have become profound anchors for my faith.  If THIS is the kind of God we’re talking about, then count me in!