“He has made everything beautiful in its time,” the writer of Ecclesiastes confidently asserts. But sometimes, our lives don’t feel so beautiful and we find ourselves waiting for that day in which all things will be indeed beautiful. Perhaps you find yourself wondering how, when, or even if those things in your life can ever be made beautiful.
Christine Hoover has written a new book entitled, Searching for Spring: How God Makes All Things Beautiful in Time. In her book, she utilizes the framework on Ecclesiastes 3 to frame both our seasons of waiting and our joyful hope of what is to come.
The Beautiful Story
I particularly appreciated the underlying structure of the book where Christine takes us through the whole story of redemptive history. She looks first at God’s creation (the definition of beautiful), the marring of that beauty in the fall, the beginning on the restoration of beauty through the redemption found in Christ, and finally, the largest part of the book is devoted to our anticipation of the time of restoration and consummation, when all things will again be made beautiful. Oftentimes, in books that talk about waiting, we can lose the forest for the trees when all we focus on is our waiting. By placing our waiting within the context of the larger biblical narrative, Christine helps us to have a Godward perspective instead of an inward, selfish approach. Her book is not a simple “hang in there, life is hard, it will get better” approach. Rather, she grounds all that she writes in the whole counsel of God.
© Laura Gabel, “New LIfe Ps. 92:14”. Acrylic on canvas, 29.25 x 23. $850.
When we think of all things being made beautiful, we each bring our own presuppositions and ideas to the table. And it is often the disconnect between our ideas and our reality that cause us to chafe in the seasons of waiting. Here again, Christine offers a helpful and gentle rebuke. “In our definition, beauty means no negativity, no suffering, no longing, and no waiting. Beauty is…instant and consumable. We must be careful what we call beautiful.” (p. 58, emphasis added). Because God is the creator of all that is, He is the One who gets to define what true beauty is, and His idea is often very different from ours.
The Not-So-Beautiful Waiting
But waiting is hard, and we don’t like it. We want quick resolution, easy answers that still take our pain seriously. We search anywhere and everywhere, but often not where we need to. “Displacing the whole counsel of God, we instead search for Instagram mantras that make us feel better for the moment.” (p.81). Christine is careful not to offer such thin hope. Rather, she takes us time and time again back to the Scriptures to see how God works in all things to craft a beauty unimaginable out of those “inconsolable things” that mar the beauty of our lives. Hard things will come, some will stay a long time. But there is a greater hope and a greater beauty that awaits those who trust in Christ.
© Laura Gabel, “Winter with My Lover”. Charcoal, 10 x 12. Private collection.
The Gospel is the ultimate story of beauty coming after waiting, pain, hurt, and death, for in it, Christ accomplished redemption for His people. Christine urges us to sink our anchor deep in that truth. “The Holy Spirit draws me back to the Word for sustenance, because in its pages are the words of life. I need the gospel of Jesus every day because I forget, because the world is noisy and distracting and, by it, my flesh is easily drawn away from joy.” (p. 166)
On the whole, I found the book to be a great reminder of how God is most often at work in the difficult places in my life, and in the lives of those around me. Yes, the waiting is hard. But it is but one piece of the greater story that God is writing. I need to be reminded of the bigger picture. Christine’s writing is honest, engaging, unpretentious and rooted in the Scriptures. I did, on occasion, find the chapter title and divisions to be a little bit unclear (in terms of matching with the content of the chapter), but what was written in the chapters was clear even if the connections were not always so obvious. I’ve known Christine for years, though we’ve never met in person. It felt as though we were having coffee together in her Virginia home while we waited very literally for Spring to begin creeping over the Blue Ridge. I appreciate her honesty, and her dogged commitment to bringing all things back to the sovereignty of God.
Beautiful Sovereignty
“God is sovereign over and active in the the unseen places—in your soul, in your relationships, in your future. God is able to make all things new and, with the broken pieces of your life, he can make something beautiful too. In face, that has been his plan all along.” (p. 41)
Perhaps you find yourself awash in a season of spiritual or emotional winter. You are waiting, but beauty seems out of reach. Pick up a copy of Christine’s book, read it alongside your Bible. Be encouraged to know that God is a work in your waiting. And He will, in His time, make all things beautiful.
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