They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations. – Isaiah 61:4

Today's Scripture Reading (October 22, 2023): Isaiah 61

I worked for a home renovation company during the summer before I went off to attend my first year at university. I didn't know much about construction but spent that summer working on various home improvement tasks. I spent a lot of time on roofs, replacing shingles, and performing many other functions at the different houses in the area.

And when there was no work, we worked on a house the boss had purchased and was renovating for resale. The home we were renovating was old, and the roof on this building was probably one of the steepest I had ever seen, a fact that became important one afternoon. I have no idea what the house looked like in its original condition. By the time I made my acquaintance with the building, it had already been dismantled and needed to be rebuilt.

The story from the roof was told one afternoon. We had already removed the shingles, and the roof's condition underneath the old shingles was terrible. As a result, we were attempting to fix several problems with the underlying structure before we reshingled the roof. For that summer, the roof was usually protected with a plastic sheet so that no more damage would be done while we worked on the underlying problems. One afternoon, after spending the day at the house and completing several tasks to repair the home, one of my workmates noticed a storm approaching. One thing I learned that summer was that storms came up extremely quickly in the area, and this one seemed to just appear over the town. And we had taken the plastic sheet off of the roof.

We had been warned never to get up on the roof without a safety harness, but on this afternoon, there just wasn't time. I reacted, ran to grab the plastic, and got it up on the roof without a harness. I was busy working to secure the sheet on the roof when a blast of wind knocked me off my feet. I slipped down the steep roof toward the edge and saved myself by grabbing the chimney before sliding off the roof. And there I hung until someone could get a ladder and help me off the roof.

God loves restoration. And he expects his people to be all about it as well. No, it is not about rebuilding houses, but my summer spent working on that old house was a good experience, showing me what restoration looks like. Restoration is rarely a quick process. Maybe that is why our society tends to throw the old away and construct something new rather than work at restoring what is broken.

I love some of the older buildings that can be found in our cities and am saddened by our penchant to destroy rather than rebuild. But, even worse, we also do it with the people in our midst. We are too quick at the task of throwing people away rather than being patient with them and allowing God to restore them through our presence. And we are the ones who lose in those situations. But when we allow God to perform restoration with others, he also does amazing things with us. And the truth is that we all have areas in our lives that need to be restored.  

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Isaiah 62