The Art Of Restoration
The germans bombed Warsaw, Poland, for six years during World War II. They were determined to wipe the city from the face of the earth. Of its population of 3.5 million, only about 35 people crawled out of Warsaw’s rubble to greet the victorious German army when it arrived.
Later, after the Germans themselves had been defeated, the people who had fled into the country returned. Someone produced some old photographs. And with their bare hands, the Polish people began to rebuild their city: stone by stone, lovingly, exactly. Where a former 700-year-old roof sagged, the reconstructed roof sagged. Thus today, when standing in the center of the reconstructed square, one is easily transported back 700 years in time.
But the interesting thing is this: today, when Germany wants to restore an old town or an old building, it is to the Polish artisans that they turn for help.
Has your life been devastated? God can give you the vision, the strength, and the skill to restore it. With him alongside, the reconstruction can begin. Then, who knows? Perhaps someday you, too, will be permitted to use that art of restoration to help the very ones who were responsible for the devastation.
To Savor The Struggle
“To prosper in sin,” wrote English poet John Trapp, “is the greatest tragedy that can befall a man this side of hell.”
When we pray earnestly for a beloved prodigal and calamity falls, we must be lovingly sympathetic—but thank God that he is undertaking. Trouble is just the old sheep dog nudging us back to the Shepherd.
The psalmist marvels at the wicked “spreading himself like a green bay tree.” The prayer book version puts it: “like a green native plant.” We have a schefflera plant in our living room. It makes a nice house plant where we live because it is not a native plant. But a schefflera plant in Florida grows to be a tree.
Why should we wonder then when we Christians struggle? We are not native plants. This earth is not our home, and we can expect to have rough times. Our Lord promised us that.
So John Trapp looked around him at the prosperous ungodly of his day in seventeenth-century England and wrote, in his inimitable way, “Envy not such an one his pomp any more than you would a corpse his flowers.”
