Broken -- Restored

     I wept today over a brief glimpse on a PBS show of an art restorer painstakingly applying gold leaf to a Seventeenth Century work of art in Italy. The time and care it must take to return something so old and damaged to its original beauty astonished me. I have struggled the past few days with hopelessness, feeling the deep loss of a suddenly broken body. Earlier this week I learned of a sweet friend looking on helplessly as her two young dogs drowned each other in a freak accident. Not many years ago that same friend watched her severely handicapped sister slip slowly away. When she learned about the dogs, the girls' mother said, "We'll just have to think of your sister playing joyfully with your dogs in Heaven! The Bible does tell us, Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." (2 Corinthians 5:17 KJV)"

      I needed both of those reminders. Kristen had no idea her tragic story would somehow give me hope, but isn't that God? If we could only remember how temporary our time on earth really is: "For our present troubles are small and won't last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever!" (2 Corinthians 4:17 NLT)  And yet, we are His crowning creation, the one thing He breathed His very life into: "Then God said, 'Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness, to rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, and over all the earth itself and every creature that crawls upon it." (Berean Study Bible)

      My friend, the Creator of the Universe, the All-Powerful Jehovah, cares about you and me that much! He has immense patience with us, even on days of doubt and fear, and He WILL restore us to glory beyond our imagining, if only we accept the free gift of His Son, the ONLY perfect sacrifice for all our sins. 

       " For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16 KJV) Now THAT'S Good News!