This morning, I’m sitting on my sofa, sipping on my coffee. I’m looking at my beautiful new Christmas tree, but it’s bothering me. All the ornaments are clustered toward the bottom front, some of them barely clinging to the end of strained skinny branches. There was no planning when the ornaments went up; just excited children unwrapping them from packing paper and hanging them where their short arms reach. 

I waited until this morning, with them asleep, to dismantle the blob at the bottom of the tree. 

I took my time, carefully removing each ornament from the bunched branches, making sure it had a secure hook and finding the empty spaces in the tree and placing it there. 

I had to stand back in order to see the empty spaces, ugly clusters and the strained branches. 

Empty spaces….ugly clusters…...strained branches…

It occurred to me to ask myself this question, “What would it like if I took this same careful approach with my own life?”

Do I take quiet mornings to examine my life in search of empty spaces, ugly clusters  and strained branches. After rearranging the tree, I made myself another cup of hot coffee and wrote down 3 observations. 

1. “Search me, oh God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lean me in the way everlasting.” Psalm 139:23-23

Just as I was searching out the empty spaces in the tree,  I should ask God to search out the “empty” areas in my life. We can’t improve if we are not convicted first. Conviction comes when we create a time and space for God to examine our hearts. No--its not a hot flash of shame or a persistent tug of guilt --it is an invitation to shift our lives around; to ask God to fill us with the love and peace that follows conviction and change. Conviction is necessary if we are to be made presentable before God. 

Sometimes what we perceive as anxiety, guilt, aimlessness and worry is simply a result of not asking God to search our beings. We need to take a step back from the neck breaking first-row view that we have on our lives. It may require taking a seat in the back row of our lives to glean a fresh perspective...one that gives us a bird’s eye view.

2. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart…Ecclesiastes 3:11 

I always turn the “ugly” side of the tree into the corner. You know, the wonky branches or naked branches that we didn’t notice at the tree lot. No one can see it if it’s facing the corner. Nor can they see the older, broken or tacky ornaments hanging on the sub-par branches. No one wants to stare at the one-legged Goofy Disney ornament from 2012. 

Sometimes what we see as ugly, is only something that has not come “into its time.” Think about this--God meant for everything to be beautiful and He gave us that longing as well. We seek to make our children dress beautifully, we decorate our homes beautifully, we seek beautiful vacations…..this thirst for beauty comes from God. 

The problem is that ugly things exist. It is a part of the broken world we live in. There are loved ones dying of cancer, unsalvageable marriages, persistent drug addictions and wayward children who never find their way home.   We want to shove them away, hide them in a corner or light them up in flames--but we can’t. 

We must try to see the beauty in the most difficult of circumstances. Just like sometimes we tilt our heads and squint to try to squeeze out the most beauty from a particular view--we have to try to trust that God turns beauty out of ashes. 

And when we come up dry and empty-handed, we must ask God to give us an eternal perspective. We trust that God will make ALL THINGS beautiful in it’s time. 

3. Anxiety weighs down the heart, but a kind word cheers it up. Proverb 12:25