Beauty From Trials

 •  1 min. read  •  grade level: 14
 
“We  ...  beholding  ...  the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image.” 2 Corinthians 3:18
While writing out the Book of Isaiah some time ago, I noticed a beautiful progression in the relationship between the Lord Jesus Christ and His people. Isaiah 28:5 says, “In that day shall the Lord of hosts be for a crown of glory, and for a diadem of beauty, unto the residue of His people.” Then many chapters later (Isa. 62:3), we find the message to those people, “Thou shalt be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God.”
After all the failures, trials and sorrows they passed through, in the end they had been refined to the point that they reflected back to God the same characteristics that He had!
Oh, that the trials and sorrows in our lives would refine us to the point that others might see the glories of Christ reflected in us, that the very image of His glory would be reflected by us to others as in a mirror as we behold His Glory!
“But we all with open face beholding as in a glass [mirror!] the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18).