The Restoration Guy

This past weekend was a bony one for me. On Saturday, I had the privilege of visiting a group of young men in Kibera who are using bones to make all sorts of expensive things, mostly decorative. Over 100 dollars later, my friends and I left there very much impressed and with bags of ‘evidence’ – evidence that bones are not an ‘end’.

Then come Sunday and my pastor decided to preach on the very same matter – bones. He spoke of how in one historic and much talked about event, Ezekiel spoke tones of them back to life. The Scripture where the story is told reads like a scene from a movie: as it starts, “old and dry bones (bleached thoroughly by the sun) covered the valley floor, scattered everywhere”; and when it ends, “they all came to life and stood up on their feet – a great army of them!” I love this story!

These two incidents have something, or shall I say someone, in common – an individual who dared to believe that more could be made of the bones, that they could do more than just sit there, dead. Yet neither at the factory nor in the valley did the bones just transform to something living and of value on their own. There had to be someone taking them through a process. For the boys in Kibera, it’s a dirty, dusty and smelly process of grinding, cutting and shaping; For Ezekiel, it was applying the words of prophecy that God gave him. The end result was the same – something new, useful, of value and life.

I wonder if these young men realize how much they represent the character of God Himself. Just like them, God is in the business of restoration. In fact, I think that’s probably the largest department in heaven. Putting people back together, giving life to dry, dead bones, over and over again. Taking things that seem useless and written off, charred beyond repair and making them glorious. Taking people that have been battered by life and fellows, and giving them a fresh breath.

Zechariah 3 has an interesting story of Satan accusing a dirty-clad priest who had obviously been through the rougher patches of his walk with God. Yet listen to what God says in Jeshua’s defence: This man is like a burning stick that has been snatched from a fire…and He goes ahead to restore Jeshua, clothing him with new fine robes, giving him new authority and calling him “a symbol of the good things to come.”

The genealogy of Jesus himself is like a soap opera – it’s filled with murderers, prostitutes, adulterers, all kinds of people. Yet God did not hide them or their faults, He chose to restore them instead, and use their very bloodlines to attach the Savior to. He chose to show us that He can take dead bones, cast off lives and use them for His glory. What hope there is in the restoring hands of the Master!

I’m encouraged today, that it doesn’t matter how much you think any part of your life is dead and useless and irreparable, if you will take the step to speak the Word of God to it, you can trust God to bring back life. You can trust Him to put in new flesh to your walk with Him, to clothe you with new raiment if that’s what you need, douse the charred edges and make things whole again, snatch you out of the fire and darkness into His glorious light.

God is in the business of restoration, and He can restore anything!