Beauty from ashes.

When I saw this secret on the Postsecret.com myspace page, my heart completely melted. Let me elaborate:

Once upon a time, there was a Jewish carpenter and a young woman. They were engaged to be married. One day, an angel of God came to the woman in a dream and told her that she was pregnant with the Son of God. As time went on, it became very clear that she indeed WAS pregnant. Now, of course this is a very tall tale at face value, so her fiancé, the carpenter was not too happy when he found out about the womna's condition, and was planning to quietly divorce her. He thought that she had slept with another man. Then one night, an angel came to the carpenter also, telling him that the child that the young woman was pregnant with was indeed conceived of a virgin birth. It was the son of God, the messiah, the redeemer of the world.
Time went by, and King Herod called for a census to be taken of all of Israel, so the carpenter and the woman, now married went to the town of the carpenter's birth, Nazareth. In Nazareth, the young woman went into labor, but because of the census, there was not a place in the entire town for them to sleep. They went from door to door, constantly being turned away, until one inn-keeper offered them the stable in which the animals slept.
The carpenter, who's name was Joseph, took his young wife, who's name was Mary, to have the baby in the stable amongst animals and hay, and the baby was named Jesus.

I love this Post Secret, because to me, this is the essence of finding the beauty in the brokenness. This person was planning on killing themselves with the very seeds that made her mother's garden beautiful. In the same way, Jesus came from a lineage of prostitutes and adulteresses. He was born in a stable, with donkeys and pigs watching. The mother of Jesus herself was presumed to be a dirty whore who slept around.
In the same way that the seeds that should've been this person's demise made their mother's garden beautiful, Jesus, the son of God, who was born from a broken and sinful people in all His perfection, later bore the burdens of the entire world, died on a cross, conquered death, and rose three days later. He did this to save us from our sin.

This gives me hope. I do a lot of things that aren't pleasing to God. I screw up every single day. I'm broken. Seeds of poison are planted inside of my heart every single day, and they hurt, but from those seeds, Jesus grows beautiful flowers. He takes the broken in my life, and makes it beautiful.
He makes beauty from ashes.