Last week, while my wife, Jana, and I enjoyed breakfast under the shade of a tree on an unusually cool Honduran morning she commented on how pretty a nearby flower looked. I turned and there was a beautiful orchid growing on a nearby tree. It was lovely.

As we finished our tortillas, black beans and fried platanos, I thought back to a few weeks earlier when we were in an exclusive area of Dallas attending the funeral of a longtime friend and ministry partner. If we had seen the same scene there, we likely would have viewed it differently.

Instead of seeing the lovely flower, we would probably have noticed how butchered, battered and ratty the tree was that it grew on. We would have noticed the piles of garbage and construction material all around the tree and the dirt patches where grass should have been. The beauty of the tiny flower would have been smothered by the disorder and disheveled scene that framed it. But in this context of gray poverty and disorder, Jana noticed this marvelously colored little flower.

“Much of life is like that,” I thought. “We can choose to look at the chaos and ugliness because there is certainly plenty of that in our world. Or we can choose to look for tiny sparks of life, hope and beauty.”

Those spots of life and hope may be rare compared to the abundant injustice and evil we see sprouting and flourishing. They may be tiny drops compared to the tsunami of evil that seems to roll in and cover everything. But they are there and we can find them if we choose to look for them.

Jesus said, “Seek and you will find.” If we are busy looking for the next injustice, the next reason for outrage or grievance, we can be sure we will find it. But let’s choose to look for the beauty, the hope, the joy that hides amidst the ashes. Not because some feel-good guru or self-help swami suggests it but because it seems to be the attitude of our heavenly Father.

As a pure and holy God He did not turn away in revulsion from our wicked and fallen world. Instead, He chose to immerse Himself in it, come as a creature of dust and walk among the mire of humanity.

And now He sends us as His ambassadors, HIs representatives, to proclaim His acceptance of others just as He accepted us. God is “not counting people’s sins against them.” He is not focused on our ugliness, our sin and failure. Can you believe it? Have you told anyone else about it? It sounds too good to be true but He chooses to focus on reconciliation, forgiveness, redemption, life and hope for all who will come to HIm.
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2 Corinthians 5:19-20
God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.