Beauty for Ashes

Beauty for ashes is more than a nice saying. It describes an exchange, and somebody has to make the exchange.

There is a story told about Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of London in 1666. He was clearing the burnt ground where old St Paul's Cathedral had stood, and he needed a stone to mark the centre of the new dome. He sent a workman to bring a flat stone from the rubble. The man came back with a piece of a broken gravestone, and the only word still readable on it was Resurgam, which is Latin for "I shall rise again." Wren later had that word carved above the south door of the new cathedral, beneath a phoenix, and it is still there today. He did not choose the word. He found it in the rubble.

Isaiah is speaking to people who are still sitting in ash, and he never tells them to cheer up. He announces what God has appointed: "to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness." In Hebrew the first pair is a play on words. "Beauty" here is pe'er, a headdress, and "ashes" is epher, and the two words use the same letters in a different order. People in mourning sat in ashes with their heads uncovered, so God's exchange puts a festive headdress where the dust used to be. Even the words turn into one another.

Then comes the purpose, and it is bigger than a new look: "that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified." God grows something out of burned ground. He does not hide the ground. He plants in it.

So you do not have to produce anything today. You do not have to sing, make a resolution, or tell anyone. Sit still with the ash that is really there, and let God be the One who speaks over it. He has promised beauty for ashes, and He is the One who makes the exchange.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 170 is Open Thine Hand (Deuteronomy 15:11).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna