[God] has made everything beautiful in its time.
- from Ecclesiastes 3:11a
 
What’s going to be made beautiful? Everything.
When’s it going to be made beautiful? In its time.
Who’s going to make it beautiful? God.
 
Let the weight of these words sink into your soul.
 
We live in a world that’s full of such ugliness. You see it on TV and in the newspaper. You also see it in your email inbox and your text threads. Perhaps, if you’re like us, you even see it in the mirror on some mornings when you can’t even meet your own gaze.
 
As we walk with God, we walk with One who has the power to transform everything to make it beautiful. But it’s important to engage the whole story here. If you get just part of it, you’ll run against the rocks.
 
The scriptures don’t teach that everything is already beautiful. We’re not talking about some perspectival trick. We aren’t reframing that divorce or death or job loss or moral failure. We’re never asked to call evil “beautiful.”
 
And Ecclesiastes doesn’t tell us that everything is already beautiful. We aren’t berated or beaten over the head in today’s passage. The broken, painful, guilt-inducing, gut-wrenching, ugly things that spring to your mind when you hear today’s passage … those things probably haven’t been made beautiful yet. They have yet to be transformed. Perhaps their time hasn’t come. And it won’t help you or anyone else for you to pretend that they are already beautiful. Do you know why?
 
God is the only one who can make everything beautiful. You can’t do it on your own. Your imagination is too small. You aren’t creative enough, strong enough, holy enough. Neither are we.
 
We struggle to imagine how some of the things we’ve done or have had done to us can ever be made beautiful. Some days, we’re not sure we want them to. Some days, we want them to stay ugly. God may have to pry them out of our grip because we’ve wrapped our identities around them and their ugliness.
 
But God can do it. In his time, he has made all things beautiful. This is a sure thing. No doubt about it. We can count on it.
 
God has made everything beautiful in its time. Even us.