Something old, something new, my life is borrowed, until I turn blue.

That’s probably the most morbid, line of a rhyme I have ever made. But it is true, isn’t it?

As I dealt with my own catastrophes this week I watched things crumble before my very eyes. 👀 I watched the beauty that I made turn into ashes. I dismantled the work of my hands and reduced it to bits and pieces.

And with my hands in tubs filled with cake crumbs, I was practically holding back tears. Or maybe I let them go, I’m not too sure. But I know how I felt, station in despair, reduced to nothing but crumbs.

Holding no substance, holding no form. But just a mountain of a mess. And it was in this mess that I heard God speak to me. And he said,

‘You can’t make something new unless you break up the old.’

You see, this new thing wasn’t really something that I was happy about. I didn’t want this to become a new thing. I was happy with the old thing. I was happy with the way it was done and the way I had been doing it.

I didn’t want it to be a new thing. I didn’t want something different. Because I’m not even sure how I feel about something different. Sometimes in life we turn up like that. We turn up to life with the way we want things and how we want it to look. And really, something new is scary. It’s a scary idea, a scary thought.

And most of us prefer to leave it untouched. Because we don’t know what it looks like. We don’t know how it will be. I know that I don’t want that new thing. I want the old thing.

In a catastrophe of cakes God would find me.

He would find me in my messy mountain just to remind me only the dismantled
gets to be built up into something new.

Because the old thing needs to stay where the old thing is. And maybe in this moment right here, there’s a piece of dismantle.

Maybe there’s something else being broken down into another tiny little bit, being broken down into smaller ashes because it’s only when we’re surrounded in ash that truly the beauty can arise from it. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. I never noticed but, actually this is where God is talking about death, isn’t he a bit? He brings beauty from ashes.

Ashes.

You have to be really dead to be ashes.

Something has got to be so dead to be ash. It’s got no hope left. It’s got no chance left. It’s dismantled and broken down. It’s nothing. And yet here is where God brings the old. He brings something old and makes something new. And everything we have is just borrowed.

And yet life runs through veins of blue.

I just want to encourage you today, because I don’t know what your messy mountain looks like.

I don’t know how the dismantled pieces of ash from your life, sits around you, floats through the air. I don’t see you at your weakest and hardest moment, just as you don’t see me in mine. at 1 a.m at a kitchen table and yet God sees this present.

He is the only one present, he is the only company when I’m surrounded by ashes, his is the only conversation when my hands are submerged in dismantled cake and he is with you and yours he is the only one that’s standing right there he is the only one waiting for you to run to him.

Thank you, Father, for the ultimate marriage, the ultimate wedding, the ultimate joining. I know that on that day, just as you have done throughout my life, you will take my old, you will take my something old, you’ll make me something new, but on that day, nothing will be borrowed, and you can show me something blue.

Isaiah 61:3

To all who mourn in Israel, he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair. In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks that the Lord has planted for his own glory.