Through Stained Glass: Restore--A Week 1 Advent Reflection

Restore.

My faith was restored twice today (12.06).

The first time by a group of children who sat with eager attention as folks from church put on the play “Pinocchio.” They sat with their little eyes wide open, laughing and gasping at ol’Pinoke’s growing nose and Jiminy Cricket’s wisdom and wit. When we were done, they giggled and applauded, shouting out their favorite characters!

They made me smile.

Then, around a table with ladies nearly nine times the children’s ages, I sat silently and in awe as I listened to these women offer their sage advice. For an hour, over food they all made, I listened to stories about their favorite Christmas gifts and holiday rituals. Then, one of the oldest silenced our rowdy group and brought us to tears as she shared a memory from her senior year in high school. It was Christmas morning. She walked home from the church service she had attended. It was still dark, and as she sauntered down the streets of her quiet town, she said there was a peacefulness she had never experienced. At this point, her eyes filled up with tears. In great detail, she recalled the chill on her cheeks, the snow under her feet, and the gratitude and goodness she felt as she watched the lights in the houses slowly turn on, which caused her to think, “The kids are up in that house! What a gift Christmas is.”

My poor attempt to recall her story does it no justice. But it was a moment so moving, it restored my hope for the magic of these holy days—if we would get past the bickering and negative bantering of recent and offer our presence to one another.

Those ladies made my smile even larger.

Restore.

As I’ve been walking with you through this season of Advent, I’ve been thinking a lot about restoration, these days. It isn’t that my faith has been dead (it hasn’t been, I promise), but like a houseplant that is allowed to sit just a little too long without a cool, glass of water, my faith soil had become hard, dry, and cracked… until this very day of God’s grace. As I spent part of it with young and old, I reclaimed my place in the story, and I was restored into a vision for this season.

What would you say if I said that an out-of-tune piano should just be thrown away? That we should give up on the fact that it doesn’t sound like it once did, thus, we should get something newer, shinier, and maybe even, more modern.

Chances are, you would say I might have had too much eggnog.

Yesterday the piano tuner was at church. I watched him for a while do what piano tuners do: tapping on all the keys, exposing the strings that are hidden within the instrument, then delicately tightening and loosening them to restore the sound to its original tune.

At times, we get out of tune. In fact, it happens more often than we would like to admit. For Christians, Advent is the time to allow the Spirit to tune our hearts to God. It is a season to restore the joy of God’s movement toward us—and rejoice in the good news that God did not, has not, and never will give up on us.

Where might you allow the Spirit in to do the slow work of restoration on your heart?

How might you restore the hope, peace, joy, or love, in the life of someone else?

What needs to be restored in your life?

Friends, remember:

¹⁰Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith.

¹¹Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you. ¹²And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. ¹³And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. ~ 1 Thessalonians 3:1-13