May God Himself, the God who makes everything holy and whole, put you together – spirit, soul and body – and keep you fit for the coming of our master, Jesus Christ. The one who called you is dependable. If He said it, He’ll do it.” (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 MSG)
I’m still thinking about wholeness. I began the year with the word restore and it’s amazing how God has kept this word in focus every day since January 1. I just finished my Old Testament class and it was mind-boggling how often the subject of restoration comes up in scripture. The prophets, despite their doom and gloom “judgement is coming” also include what scholars call ‘aftermath’ oracles; promises of eventual restoration. It seems that from the very beginning, God has been set on restoration with us: setting us back into right relationship with Him.
We tend to think of restoration as something having been destroyed and then being put back together like in the ServPro commercials. We are misinformed, rarely will restoration return a piece to it’s original glory because time, weather and wounds have all left their mark. I think of my hundred year old house; though it is restored, I’m certain it looks a bit different than when it was first built. There is a certain quality that a house begins to possess when it’s been lived in, when it has seen generations of families pass through its doorframes. Each of those families have left their marks and those marks have enhanced the story and thus the beauty of the house.
A few weeks ago a good friend of mine gave me the most recent issue of the Magnolia Journal. I savor these magazines the way some people savor their chocolate; a teensy wonderful bit at a time. Yesterday, I finally had a few moments in the carline to begin to digest the letter from the editor. Joanna Gaines dedicated the issue to wholeness (the end result of restoration) and her words grabbed a hold of my heart right away. She wrote:
“There’s a grace woven into the very fabric of wholeness that invites us to live in the abundance of our story. That every piece of our identity – the broken, the sad, the hard, just as much as the fulfilled, the good, the happy, is stitched together to make us complete.” (Joanna Gaines)
When I read her words in the carline, I pictured a slab of hardwood, fractured and scarred by the bumps and bruises of life, but painstakingly filled in with veins of gold. I think this is what God does when we bring our brokenness to Him. He seals the gouges and cracks with Himself as pure gold. We aren’t just restored to original design but transformed more into His likeness for His glory! Our life wounded by the ravages of sin but healed by His fierce affection is actually more valuable and appealing than ever before.
then the burn was filled with gold.
The end result of restoration is not perfection but wholeness. Wholeness is the power and beauty of being put back together by a holy God. It has been His highest hope for us since we left the Garden.
“Long before He laid down earth’s foundations, He had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of His love, to be made whole and holy by His love.” (Ephesians 1:4 MSG)
O Lord, we are grateful that You can redeem our wounds. Help us acknowledge we have them and give us the courage to bring them to You. Make us whole. We realize our restored state will be streaked with Your grace and full of Your fingerprints. Wholeness won’t be a lack of scars but a lack of pain seeping out of those scars. Thank You for Your restoration promises poured out on every page of scripture. Amen.