I will restore to you the years
that the swarming locusts has eaten,
the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter,
my great army, which I sent among you.
Joel 2:25
Joel
I always liked the name, but it was in the fall of 1995 that I determined to one day name one of my kids Joel. Driving home one night from grad school, I heard a sermon that stirred in me this sublime idea of restoration. I fell in love with the concept of a God who was so powerful that He could even restore “what the locust had eaten.” That God could surpass fixing what was broken to bringing me to a place of full restoration. I never wanted to forget that attribute of God.
That was months before the swarming locust came into my life the night my father died.
It was years before the hopper took my mother,
the destroyer wreaked havoc in our family, and
the cutter took my son.
I didn’t understand loss and brokenness when I first came to understand that God was a God of restoration. I hadn’t needed the restoration. Now, 25 years later, I have to ask myself what restoration is.
When Job lost everything, God brought restoration.
“And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job, when he had prayed for his friends. And the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.” (Job 42:10)
God might have been able to restore his fortunes, and allow him to have more children, but he could never replace the children that Job lost. God didn’t take away the memories of the pain Job experienced.
The Israelites in the days of Joel’s prophecy might come into a time of plenty, but the scars of the famine, the war, and the losses were never gone.
What does full restoration look like?
I think we need to look to Christ. In his glorified state, Christ still wears the scars of crucifixion.
While God promises to remember our sin no more, God is not forgetful. God most certainly remembers the cross.
The Hebrew word used in Job 2:25 that is translated as restore is shalam. It can also be translated as peace, and defined in Strong’s as “complete, safe, peaceful, perfect, whole, full, at peace.”
Can you come to a place of peace and wholeness while bearing open wounds or scars left by this life?
Yes.
Will you go back to a the same state you were in before the brokenness?
No.
You will be different. You may have scars. You may be left with longings that will never be filled on this side of eternity. You might live in pain. I know that doesn’t sound like perfection and wholeness, but if can be. Christ on the cross is the model of God in pain, God with scars, and God existing in broken relationship.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. (Hebrews 13;8).
Christ resurrected is a prefect God marked with scars. Sunday’s God has been restored from death. He is both the same and changed.
We bear the scars of this world.
We can be fully restored, yet changed.
We can have peace and longing in the same soul.
We can find the redemption of our story in the way we use our loss and brokenness to heal the wounds of others.
We can be filled with the Spirit of God and still sense the emptiness of our loss.
Restoration doesn’t always look the way I want it to look.
