Posts with the tag “restoration”

On September 11, 2001, Genelle Guzman-McMillan was trapped in the rubble of the North Tower for twenty-seven hours. Alive in the dark. Unable to move. Unable to see. With no way to know whether anyone was still looking. On September 12, a hand found hers. The ancient Jewish framework for understanding history has a name for the age we are living in. Olam Hazeh. This current age. The age of the rubble. The groaning. The twenty-seven hours. But Olam Hazeh is not the final word. Acts 3:21 says Jesus remains in heaven until the restoration of all things. All things. The rubble is not the ending. The rescue is still underway. Read the full post.  Read More

Most of us have places in our lives that used to bother us. The relationship that drifted. The habit we know is costing us something. The dream we quietly filed away. We stopped seeing the ruins because seeing them hurts and not seeing them is easier. But numbness is not healing. And the comeback begins the moment you stop being okay with things being broken.  Read More

Psychologists call it a defensive mechanism. Pretending to be indifferent when you actually care deeply is a way of protecting yourself from rejection, from helplessness, from the pain of wanting something you cannot control. Most people know what that feels like from the inside. Here is what they may not know. The Bible has been addressing this condition for thousands of years. And the God at the center of the eschatological story is not a deity who performed indifference while creation fell apart. He is a God whose care has been constant, purposeful, and driving the entire story toward the day He makes all things new. The comeback Nehemiah experienced did not start with a plan. It started with grief. It started when he stopped pretending. Read the full post.  Read More

Most of us have years we have quietly written off as the price of getting to where we are now. But Joel says repay. God is not just moving you past the lost years. He is moving you through them. The locust years are part of the material He is working with. Your story is not behind schedule. It is still being written.  Read More

Sonny Kapoor runs a crumbling hotel with a leaking roof and broken plumbing, and greets every disaster with the same line delivered with complete sincerity and absolutely no supporting evidence: "Everything will be alright in the end. So if it is not alright, it is not the end." The guests find it infuriating and irresistible. Because they want it to be true. Here is what Sonny did not know. He was not being optimistic. He was being theological. The Bible has been making his argument for thousands of years, backed by something far more solid than a hopeful hotel manager in Jaipur. Time is not a wheel going nowhere. It is a story going somewhere magnificent. And God already declared what the ending looks like. Read the full post.  Read More

George Banks did not see it coming. That is the whole joke of Father of the Bride. The world moved and he was still standing in the same spot. Later he says it quietly: "That is the thing about life, is the surprises, the little things that sneak up on you and grab hold of you." Every father nodded. Because every father knows exactly what he is describing. But here is what George Banks did not know. The very last words of the Old Testament are about a father. And God placed the restoration of the father and child relationship at the hinge point of history, right before the great Day of the LORD. Faithful fatherhood is not just a private family matter. It is a prophetic act. Read the full post.  Read More