Life Is Like a Kaleidoscope

Recently while I was praying for those who are far from God, and whose lives seem to be hopeless messes, I had a vision of a kaleidoscope where many different pieces make up a mosaic of a beautiful image. If you turn the mechanism the picture changes into another picture different from the first but still beautiful. When a kaleidoscope breaks, all the pieces fall in a pile and seem to be a hopeless mess.

Webster defines a kaleidoscope as:
· A tubular optical instrument in which loose bits of colored glass at the end of the tube are reflected in mirrors so as to display ever-changing symmetrical patterns as the tube is rotated.
· A continually shifting pattern, scene or the like,
· beautiful shape.

God started showing me that our lives are like a kaleidoscope. All of our experiences make up the 'loose bits of colored glass'. When we give our lives to Him, He takes all those experiences (the good and the difficult) and creates a beautiful picture.

If we turn from Him and break our relationship, or feel as if we have messed up really badly and missed His 'perfect will', we tend to look at our lives as being filled with many broken pieces, fallen in a jumble all around us. But when we turn back to Him, He takes all those broken pieces of our lives and turns them into a new beautiful picture.

The message I got from this, is that there are no hopeless messes in God's eyes. He can, and does, and will, take all the broken pieces of our lives and turn them into a beautiful mosaic when we give them to Him. It doesn't matter how far off track we (or our loved ones) have gotten. We don't have to go through life thinking we missed God's 'perfect will' for our lives (the hidden message here being we will never receive His full approval). Yes,...He does have a beautiful plan for each of our lives, but when we mess up He doesn't look at it as a hopeless cause and say 'too bad you missed it'. When we are willing to turn back to Him and surrender all the broken pieces, He will smooth out the sharp edges as He works in our lives and then expertly place them into a new and beautiful picture.

The final image may not be the same as the first one He gave us, but it is new and beautiful to Him. The ever changing picture of our lives is not like a mosaic, which is a rigid picture made up with many pieces of colored glass and set in stone, but like the kaleidoscope that ever changes, as He changes us from glory to glory.