Restoration
Hope you are enjoying a different kind of weekend. As you watch and shovel snow, I invite you to take a few minutes to read some thoughts from Cindy D. Where is God bringing restoration for you?
Cindy: I’ve been pondering what “restoration” means and I’m curious what it means to you. Right now I have three main thoughts bumping around in my brain and I’m curious what you all think. I thought this would be a timely discussion given we are celebrating a year of this thing called Restoration Anglican Church. Here goes…
First: I heard this awesome song on my iPod that haven’t heard in ages (gotta love the ability to shuffle through my 3000 songs and find buried treasures!)…Nichole Nordeman’s Anyway (lyrics below). I’ve always loved this song and its imagery of a beautiful painting buried underneath dirt and grime that is wiped away over time. See picture from www.alamrestorations.com/). I think it’s an amazing picture of the sanctification process that is at work in us after we choose to follow Jesus– being ever more transformed in to the image of Christ until the day we are finally and ultimately restored and we see Him face to face.
Even better though is the idea that God loves us anyway and places us on His “wall”. In all honesty, I’m still working on fully grasping this one. How He can see my dirt and grime (i.e. sin) and love me anyway is beyond me, but I am humbled and thankful for it! Much more comfortable for me is the idea that’s also painted here of our own efforts to scrape and scuff away the dirt that don’t ultimately make any difference in God’s love for us. He loves us regardless of the dirt and grime because He sees the beauty He created in us. This is not to say the polishing and shining here on earth are useless – as He polishes and shines us (through the conviction of the Holy Spirit among other things) it allows us to shine His light more fully in a dark world.
Anyway – Nichole Nordeman
Bless the day this restoration is complete . Dirty dusty something must be underneath. So I scrape and I scuff – Though it’s never quite enough . I’m starting to see me finally .
A gallery of paintings new and paintings old . I guess it’s no surprise that I’m no Michelangelo . Every layer of mine hides a lovely design. It might take a little patience. It might take a little time. But you called me beautiful – When you saw my shame . And you placed me on the wall , Anyway .
You who have begun this work will someday see. A portrait of the holiness you meant for me . So I polish and shine – til it’s easier to find even an outline of mine.
But you called me beautiful. When you saw my shame. And you placed me on the wall , Anyway.
Second: As one who is experienced at waiting, Joel 2:25 (“So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten”) is a concept I have seen play out in my own life as well as many others. It’s encouraging to remember God’s promises and the fulfillment I’ve seen and experienced. On a lighter note, a friend recently joked about this verse with regard to their waiting, “Those are some pretty fat locusts!”
Finally, as I’ve been pondering this idea of restoration, I did a little word study on it. Amazingly the Hebrew word occurs 1,066 times in the Old Testament! The general themes are restoring the people of Israel to the Promised Land, restoring people to their fortunes as well as restoring people to God. Even more amazing is the fact that the Greek word for restoration only occurs 13 times in the New Testament. My thought on this is that Jesus, as the fulfillment of so many of God’s promises, embodies the idea of restoration that was so prevalent in the Old Testament…pretty cool!
So, those are my thoughts… What does Restoration mean to you? How can we encourage each other to be more and more fully “restored”?
