“However, the LORD your God would not listen to Balaam but turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the LORD your God loves you” (Deuteronomy 23:5, NIV).
I spent a good deal of time in Berlin during my military service. Berlin was once the capital of Nazi Germany. During the regime’s final days, more than 300 sorties were conducted on the great city by the Americans and British. Half of the homes were damaged. One-third of the city was rendered unlivable. Sixteen square kilometers were reduced to rubble.
Enter the Schuttbergs. The Schuttbergs arose following the conclusion of World War II. Several metric tons of debris were piled into mounds. Yet rather than allowing the rubble heaps to become an eye sore, the Germans planted greenery upon them and incorporated them into the urban landscape. What once had been a testimony to the ugliness of war became a witness to the beauty of God’s restorative power.
God specializes in turning curses into blessings. The brief verse above alludes to a story in Numbers 22-24 about a man named Balaam. Balaam was a soothsayer. He had a knack for predicting future events. The king of Moab attempted to hire Balaam to curse Israel, so the Moabite army might defeat Israel in battle. God, however, intervened and created something good out of a bad situation.
God is doing something similar in your life. You may be facing a cursed circumstance at this present moment. Yet God is working on your behalf to turn your struggle into a blessing. God is taking the rubble from your present (or even previous) state of affairs and transforming the debris into a towering Schuttberg. God does such things because He loves you.
A young music artist by the name of Abby Lyons describes the redemptive love of God this way:
Life can take back the things that we took,
The chaos is right there where we never look.
And all of our plans never go as they should,
But anything bad can be turned into good.
Yes there is darkness outside of this room,
Sometimes I see it inside here, too.
Despite all the pain that my heart has withstood,
I know anything bad can be turned into good.