Daring To Hope: 5-Day Devotional By Katie Davis MajorsSample

“I Will Make This Beautiful” I went to Uganda believing that beauty could be found in all things. I thought this beauty was found in a “happy ending.” I unknowingly believed that God’s blessing was evident only when things turned out well. And so I kept asking and waiting for the beauty to be revealed on my terms. I wanted to write the story all tied up nicely with a bow on top. The story with the happy ending that I wanted, pretty and neat and not painful or confusing.  But I found through deep loss that some stories don’t end the way I want them to. I looked around at my Ugandan brothers and sisters, also fervent believers in Christ, and all the ways that their stories were not ending in the ways that they planned or desired either. I knew women who were faithful wives and mothers, faithful to the Word of God, who still had to pick through heaps of trash to find something to feed their children at the end of the day. I knew families who loved their children just as much as I loved mine but had to watch them die because they didn’t have access to affordable medical care. I knew children left parentless due to preventable, treatable disease. Everywhere I looked, suffering abounded. This realization left me with two explanations: either God is not who He says He is, or He is and I needed to relearn how to know Him even in hardship.  I devoured Scripture in a new way, trying to find the answers to my questions. I read the words of Romans 8:32 over and over. God gives us all things we need. Could I believe that God was giving everything I needed, even when it wasn’t what I wanted?  I knew that I had to learn to believe this. For me, for my children, for those we were serving. We needed to believe that God, who gave His Son, was giving us all that we needed and that was beauty enough, even without a happy ending. I will make this beautiful too, God whispers. Could He? And I pray over and over again, Oh, Lord. Give me eyes to see. In what ways is God giving you everything you need right now? How is He making these things beautiful?