Sometimes life isn’t awesome.
I assume this is obvious, but if you need confirmation, go watch the news for thirteen seconds. I’ll wait.
It’s easy to think life would be better if we were all walking around like Emmet in The Lego Movie, cheerfully going about our day singing, “Everything is awesome!”
Of course, we do have fleeting moments of awesome. Wedding days. Vacation days. Days when you get promoted, get a new car, or get good news that changes everything. On those days, it’s easy to wish they were all like that.
The other times, when life feels much less than awesome, we wonder how God could be God and not make everything awesome.
The truth is, He did.
We just didn’t appreciate it.
In the Garden of Eden, everything actually was awesome. Humans and animals were cool to each other. You could pet lions without fear of them biting your hand off (which would be extremely awesome!) Everything worked perfectly, and God provided for every need. I bet even the weather was awesome too, making San Diego seem like Siberia.
It didn’t take long for Adam and Eve to throw it all away. One reason the devil was able to trick them so easily is that they didn’t know how good they had it. They had nothing to compare it to.
Their sin still haunts us, and we’re left cursing God when things in our lives and world aren’t awesome.
We lament about the sorry state of things, but let’s be honest: if we were left to our own devices, they’d probably be even worse. It’s only by the grace of God and the actions of the Holy Spirit within us that bring us the grace, goodness, and beauty that break through the darkness and provide the rays of awesome we do get.
The Great Creator takes our messy hearts and this dark world and turns it into art.
And God’s art uses all the colors.
He uses our failures and mistakes.
He uses our pain.
He even uses the devil.
“As an artist, God makes use even of the devil. The bright colors in a painting stand out most clearly when viewed beside the dark ones.”
–St Augustine
The awesome days wouldn’t seem as awesome if we didn’t have something to compare them to.
When we get to Heaven, a place where everything really is awesome, we’ll appreciate it all the more, because we know what it’s like to live in a place that was often far from awesome.
Meanwhile, instead of shaking our fist at God when things aren’t very awesome on Earth, may we praise Him for the glimpses of Heaven He gives us every day.
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