Before the Beautiful
By Pastor Justin Cooper
My parents are renovating the house I grew up in. It's a little ranch house in West Virginia, nothing extravagant, but they finally tore into it — new floors, new cabinets, the walls coming down for an open floor plan. The designer even sent a digital rendering of the finished thing. It's beautiful.
Then my mom started texting me the progress photos.
And I'll be honest with you — those pictures drove my anxiety through the roof. Walls torn down. Debris everywhere. Cabinets splintered and destroyed. If you only saw the middle of it, you would swear nothing good could ever come out of that mess.
But that's the order of things. The rendering is real. It's just that the demolition comes first.
"It is not diamond then pressure. It is pressure then diamond. The pressure comes first."
"It is not diamond then pressure. It is pressure then diamond. The pressure comes first."
Pastor Justin Cooper
Gospel Light Baptist Church
You and I know John the Baptist for one glorious moment — the day he stood at the River Jordan and pointed to Jesus. But look at how the book of Luke describes the years before that day. Luke 1 verse 80 says the child grew, waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his showing unto Israel.
"And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his shewing unto Israel."
— Luke 1:80
Thirty years. Before the famous sentence, before the crowd at the river, before the moment every prophet would have traded everything to have — thirty years in a dry, lonely, difficult place. Most of his life was spent in the desert, not at the Jordan.
I've talked to so many of you this week who are trying to race ahead to the victory side. You want the answer today. The job today. The marriage healed today. And I understand it. But the blister comes before the callous. The demo comes before the finished room. The desert comes before the Jordan.
So here is what I'd ask of you this Monday morning: before you beg God to fast-forward the season, stop and ask a different question. Not what is missing from my desert — but who is with me in it. Then write down one thing this hard stretch has already taught you about God that you would never have learned on the easy side.
The mess is not the end of your story. It's the middle of it.
Father, I don't love the demolition. I don't understand every wall You've let come down. But I trust that You are building something in me I couldn't be ready for any other way. Steady my heart in the middle of the mess, and help me look for You right here in the desert. In Jesus' name, amen.
Reflection: What "before the beautiful" season am I in right now — and what might God be building that I can't see yet?
