Awesome. Wasn’t it beautiful to see those children praising God like that? That was an awesome time of worship, to see the little ones praise, to join them in praise, and I don’t know how she does it, time and time again (I think more faithfully than I can pull anything out of the Word), but my mother planned some worship when she wasn’t even going to be here that was just exactly what I needed, and I’m sure I’m not alone. But I’ve been looking into adoption throughout the scriptures as I prepared for Wednesday night, and all through these songs that we heard and sang today, we heard about God, who He is, and Him making us His, making us new, and about that idea of adoption and that idea of taking something that might not seem to have any value. And if you want to hear more on the adoption thing, we’ll talk about it Wednesday night, but as I was listening to some of this and praising, this image popped in my head which is somewhat related, making things new.
I remember being a little boy and we’d be traveling with my parents and my little brothers. And we’d be driving down the highway, and off to one side of the vehicle or another you’d see some field. And in the field would be the remains of a house. And some of them you could tell where once beautiful, nice houses. And some of them you could tell where probably not all that great to begin with. But at this point, they were falling in, you could see patches of holes all the way through them, roofs were caved in, vines and weeds had grown all through them, and there just wasn’t much left that said house at all. This was back when Mom and Dad were definitely rent to rent to rent, month to month to month, and it was my mother’s dream to have a house of her own.
And every so often we’d pass one of those houses, and Dad would look over and say, “There’s your dream house, Honey.” And they would laugh. They would laugh, because as much as they wanted a house, nobody wanted that. You know, I think you’d be better off burning it down and setting up a tent.
These were not safe. They were not attractive. There was nothing good about them. Whatever value they had had at any point in time was gone. You couldn’t even restore these. What’s left is rotten. What’s left is broken. Bulldoze the whole thing, use the field for something else, or build something entirely new.
God could definitely look at us that way, because we were fearfully and wonderfully made. We were born beautiful and innocent, but under a curse. And no matter how beautiful we are, it doesn’t take too long for the curse of sin to affect our lives and we become broken, and destroyed. And our lives can be something that when you look at it, there’s nothing of value there... in our eyes. And it can seem like it’s just not even worth restoring, that it would just easier for the One who spoke the world into existence to go, “Burn it to the ground. I can start over. I can do something better than to try to rebuild what was here, to restore this.”
But He didn’t do that. He looked at that broken down life, like that broken down house, and not only said, “I will restore that to what it was intended to be, beautiful and lovely, but I will pay everything that is of value to Me for that broken down shack. I’m not just going to try to get a ‘C’mon you know this isn’t worth anything so you’re wanting to sell that for fifty cents, I’ll give you a quarter.’” No. He gave everything. He said, “You see a broken down, destroyed, rubble. I see a treasure worth the Life of My Son.
That’s what He sees when He looks at us. That was the price that He paid when He went to the cross for us. We can look in the mirror, or we can look at others, or others can look at us and see nothing but brokenness, destruction, rot, ash, nothing worth anything. But He saw something worth everything.
And He’s not scrapping who we are and starting over. He’s building a new creation In our spirit now, but it was what was always intended. Restoration to what was always intended, because each of us has something unique to reflect God’s glory with. That was the price that He paid. That’s what we need to remember today. So that we don’t buy the lie that we have no value, that we’re not worth anything, that God can’t make something good out of the destruction that’s sitting out in the field of our lives. Let’s remember that.
Father, I thank you for the price that You paid, that You valued us so much, that You saw what was left, and what we had done, and what had been done to us and said, “I love that! That’s My dream, to restore that to the beauty that I wanted it to be when I created it.” Make our lives the beauty that you intended. Help us to remember the mighty cost that You paid so that we could come to You, so that we could be restored by You, so that we could become Yours and be adopted by You. Let us not forget it today, now as we take communion, or as we leave this place, or at all throughout the week or the rest of our lives, In Jesus’ name. Amen.
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