Restoration

Yesterday's ride left me with a word to meditate on: restoration. I really feel as though God is doing a specific work of restoration in me through this season. I'm not sure exactly what He is restoring, whether it's a simple faith and trust, a connection with family (with all that family brings) or a reconnection with my roots to help me understand what has shaped me over almost 33 years. It's probably a bit of all of them. I definitely sense something taking place in all of those areas and more that are probably not as obvious and even more that I am not even aware of right now.

I can't help but be amazed by the fact that restoration is woven so deeply into the fabric of life. None of us are what we were created to be. God began the work of restoration before any of us knew that we were meant for something more. An emptiness was placed within us when Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in rebellion against God. Relationship, as God intended it between Himself and humanity, was fractured beyond our natural ability to heal it.

There's a reason that religions are so prevalent and have found so many different expressions in so many cultures over the entire history of humankind. It is an attempt to tap into that emptiness and find something to occupy that space. We try to fill it with everything we can think of; with money, family, accomplishment, pain, love, good deeds, lust, social consciousness, creativity, sex, entertainment, food, education... and find that none fit quite right and that no matter how much of it we try to cram in there, it's never enough and only brings a temporary reprieve which leaves us feeling more... emptiness.

All the while, God has raised His voice and said, "I'm right here." He has raised His voice by telling people about Himself through the Bible, by giving some rules to live by in the Ten Commandments, through the warnings of the prophets when people were living outside the rules, and ultimately, He has raised His voice through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The blood of Jesus speaks more loudly to our need for restoration than anything in all of human history. I believe that Jesus was the Son of God and the Son of Man. I believe He was fully God and fully human. I believe that He was tempted in every way (not necessarily with every individual temptation) known to man and that He lived a perfect, blameless, sin-free life.

I know some people don't believe in sin, but guess what, if you've ever done anything selfish in your life at someone else's expense, you are guilty of it. The Bible tells us that the wages of sin is death. A wage is something you earn. If you have sinned, your payment is death. But... I love that word in a case like this. After something hopeless has been laid at your feet, you love to hear the word "but." But, the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ. A gift is something that is undeserved. It is something that someone else has paid for that is being offered to you.

There are those that say, "If God is a loving God, then how could He just sit around waiting to judge everybody? How could He send people to Hell if He loved them?" My response? The blood of Jesus is a gift offered that pays the penalty that we deserved. It is God's ultimate act of love for us. The death of His own Son, for the life of those that have rebelled, done their own thing and ignored Him. He's not sitting around waiting to judge. He's waiting for people to receive His gift and be restored to Him.

I don't know if anybody will read this that doesn't already believe all of this, but if you are one of those people, please feel free to comment or ask questions. Seriously look at it without prejudice or an outcome already in mind and see if it isn't true.