He said he was driving by and saw that beautiful old barn sitting out in the tall grass and wanted to know if it was for sale.  I told him he had a funny idea of beauty.  Sure, it was a handsome building in its day.  But then, there's been a lot of winters pass with their snow and ice and howling wind.  The summer sun's beat down on that ole' barn till all the paint's gone, and the wood has turned silver gray.  Now the old building leans a good deal, looking kind of tired.  Yet, that fellow called it beautiful.

That set me to thinking.  I walked out to the field and just stood there, gazing at the old barn.  The fellow said he planned to use the lumber to line the walls of his den in a new country home he's building down the road.  He said you couldn't get paint that beautiful.  Only years of standing in the weather, bearing the storms and scorching sun...only that can produce beautiful barn wood.

It came to me then.  We are a lot like that, you and I.  Only it's on the inside the beauty grows with us.  Sure, we turn silver gray too...and lean a bit more than we did when we were young and full of sap.  But the Good Lord knows what he is doing.  And as the years pass he's busy using the hard wealth of our lives, the dry spells, the stormy seasons, to do a job of beautifying our souls that nothing else can produce.  And to think how often folks holler because they want life easy!

They took the old barn down today and hauled it away to beautify a rich man's house.  And I reckon that you and I'll be hauled off to Heaven to take on whatever chores the Good Lord has for us in the Great Sky Ranch.  And I suspect we'll be more beautiful then for the seasons we've been through here...and just maybe add a bit of beauty to our Father's house. 

May today there be peace within you.  May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.  "I believe that friends are quiet angels who lift us to our feet when our wings have trouble remembering how to fly."