Restoration is a bit of an interest of mine. Not just the restoration of the peoples of the earth to relationship with Father. I also have an interest in the restoration of physical things. I drive a 1976 Triumph 2500TC, by preference, which gives me a certain insight into what it takes to keep old equipment in good nick. It is the former restoration that is at the centre of this writing.
The act of restoring something to its former beauty, or glory, takes an act of suspending the processes of logic and the function of valuation. My car currently owes far more than it will ever fetch - its intrinsic value is in the pleasure I enjoy in driving it and the joy that it is usually the only one in any car park I go into.
I am not suggesting that any narcissistic tendencies that I have are present in Father for even a mille-second. On the contrary I believe He desires restoration, not from the point of view of ownership but because of the love He feels toward us, His creation. He seeks us to restore our relationship to Him because of the relationship which develops as a result of His love.
He is different from me in another aspect as well, I have to find the parts and either do it myself or get another to. He, having provided the solution to the problem of reconciling to a flawed humanity expects us to make the first move and then help others make their first move. That is the fundamental thing with His restoration plan, it is up to us.
The death and life of Jesus is the value added mechanism in the reconciliation of man to God, He adds something, for each of us, that makes returning to Father attractive. I used the words “death and life” in that order deliberately. It is Jesus ‘death that gives us a bridge that we can communicate with God over and more often than not it is God who comes to us when we call on Him and it is His life that provides a model for the way we should learn to live in love.
You see in many ways Jesus is a cultural revolutionary. During His earth life He stood against all sorts of social and religious injustices. I believe that He stood for something different in the eyes of the Hebrew public, that as well as the love that He elicited from the people through His own love walk.
In just the same way that Jesus lived, so should we standing against the excesses of our time, loving the unlovable and downtrodden. It is so easy to get drawn into the norms of life as everybody else lives it. Just the peer pressure of everyone having a perception of you can make Christ living just that little more difficult.
As I said in the beginning Restorers tend to forgo rational value judgements. God did that to rescue you and I, He allowed someone very special to Him to die just so that connection could never again be broken. In a way He parlayed a Son into many sons and daughters, such is the extent of His love for us.
We start out “Before Christ” as shards of broken pottery and over time Father turns us into a thing of beauty, and in the process we get to enjoy fellowship with our Master. I personally find that something that is worth sharing with the people I am encountering. I hope that by having Jesus in me He draws them to Himself and that when they are ready He will give me the words of life that they seek
Others are entitled to the joy and peace, the life we enjoy, are we sharing with them the Love of the Lord in our lives? I hope so.
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