a Restoration begins...

I spent the day with my teenage children and good friends cleaning up a very old building.  Discolored papers and ledgers left behind gave hints of a vegetable and fruit business from the 1950's. Or maybe  the smell of moth balls and wet paper gave its age away. Whichever it was---the building had seen its better days. A local congregation of Griffin, Georgia obviously could see beyond the mess, because it has plans to turn it into a new worship center, as they have been blessed with a growing congregation.

 When we entered the building, the mess was overwhelming. Broken boards, pieces of glass, torn insulation and rusty nails were scattered across the dust-covered floor. Our objective was to clear the floors, pull up old carpet and dump the trash--start the process of restoration. It didn't take long for the entire first floor to fill with dust from the constant movement. It was hard work--sweeping, shoveling, carrying, dumping--repetitive. It was the kind of work that is physical but not so much mental. One could find herself drifting off in thought but still keeping with the task at hand.

It often seems that it is through this type of work the Lord chooses to speak to me. Perhaps it lacks just enough thought processes to hear Him. Whatever it was today; he was whispering; I was listening, and I realized that lately, I have felt a lot like the old building--worn down, tired, broken--in need of restoration. Like the building, my foundation seems to have been threatened, neglected, forgotten. Things I've always believed are blurry. My path is dust-filled, uncertain.  And while I can cite the many wrongs that have broken me, I believe He wanted me to see today that they wouldn't have been able to break me if my focus had remained on the foundation I have with Him. It's good to serve others; it's great to give of yourself. But when your humaness is forgotten and the service becomes the focus, even IT will break you.  And when you begin to break--little by little--you reach a point, like the old building, in which you can no longer be of service. And that is a point I never want to see. That is the point He has saved me from. It took pulling away from so much that I love. But it was needed to rebuild, restore.

So, I lift my hands to the Lord. For today,  in a little part of Griffin, He began two restorations...one was the building's, the other was mine.

Thank you God for showing me my own brokeness through the brokeness of a building.