One of my favorite songs by Shane and Shane is called "Beauty for Ashes." The lyrics from this song comes from Isaiah 61, which is an awesome passage, but my recent reading in Jeremiah has drawn me back to the truth of this song.

Jeremiah 2:32 says this "Does a maiden forget her jewelry, a bride her wedding ornaments?
Yet my people have forgotten me, days without number."

This passage started to make me thing about what it is that makes us beautiful. What is it that gives us worth? God compares himself to a young woman's jewelry or the wedding ornaments of a bride....things that set them apart, and add luster to what might be plain without the ornaments.

More and more I look around at the world (when the Lord blesses me with those slim opportunities to step outside of my selfishness and see the world just slighty through His eyes) and I see how much stock people put into making themselves look good. I do it myself with the phone I carry, the clothes I wear, even the way that I form my facial expressions. I....we....are constantly trying to draw peoples attention to ourselves and gain approval, when the truth of the matter is that I am grossly sinful and the only thing good in me at all is Jesus. He is my ornament, He is my jewelry, and the one thing that sets me apart, and makes my plainness something special.

Unfortunatly I think that as a church, we have followed where our flesh would lead in many of these areas. Please don't get me wrong. I am not a church-basher. Nothing makes me more angry then people who continuously write about what a joke the church is. I passionatly love the church, but I love it like a friend that needs to hear truth from me at times, and I impart that truth because I love them.

The church has entered into an arms race (to coin a Bryan Karas term) with the culture that we simply cannot ever win. To be plain about it, the world will always have more money, more inovation, and more people who care only about furthering their own fame to carry out their new ideas. You all know what I mean. I don't have to spell out all the detaila about how churches have taken the cross out of the building to make people more comfortable, or put of giant screens like a football stadium, or time their worship services to laser light shows. We have all read the articles and seen the news.

The question I would like to pose both to Christians and to the church, is what makes us beautiful? Do we really understand that all we have to bring to the table is ashes, and that Christ is the only one who can trade those ashes for His beauty? This is a call to trade. Trade the ashes that come in the form of money, houses, cars, clothes, accessories, facial expressions, food, lights, couches, cool flyers, music, movies, and anything else that you think makes you special or that makes your church special, and trade them for the true beauty of Jesus Christ living in us.

Beauty for ashes, and a garment of praise for my heaviness. Take this heart of stone and make it Yours. I delight myself in the richest of fare, trading all that I have, for all that is better.
-Shane and Shane