Grace Notes The coming restoration

Nancy Kennedy

Lately, I’ve been into the before and after photos on Facebook of old, beat-up dressers or china hutches that people have restored. Sometimes a person will strip the piece of furniture down to the bare wood and re-stain it or paint it, give it new handles and drawer pulls. Sometimes people will take everything apart and turn the original piece into something else. A dresser becomes a bench with drawers or a hutch becomes a home bar. I love to watch the selfie videos of someone discovering a hideous, ugly piece of furniture at a thrift store, bringing it home and glopping on the stripping solution, then scraping off a dozen layers of paint. They get out their rotary sander and the dust is flying. Then when they’re finished it’s a work of art in their home. It looks like hard work, but it also looks satisfying.I look at the photos and watch the videos because they bring my anxiety level down a few notches. Actually, as I’ve recently learned, the process of transforming furniture is more refurbishing than restoration. Refurbishing means improving something, freshening it up, making it more modern (or less modern), making it better or more functional. But restoration means returning something to its original state or condition. People who restore historical buildings go to great lengths and often great cost to find the same original materials. If the house originally had walnut floors, you can’t use vinyl planks that look like walnut and call it a restoration. It can be a remodel or a refurbish, but it’s not a true restoration. A recurring theme throughout the Bible is restoration and how God is always at work restoring and reconciling and redeeming. He heals and restores relationships, with himself and among people. He is always in the process of restoration. "He restoreth my soul,” King David wrote (Psalm 23:3). He restoreth mine, too. When I am filled with anxiety, he leads me beside still waters and quiets my heart, but it's not once and for all. Not yet. I think that within the human heart there’s an innate desire for restoration. We feel our brokenness and the “not rightness” of the world that’s increasing in speed and reach and intensity. That’s why I watch furniture makeover videos. When the news gets too overwhelming, I want to see something restorative, damage turned to beauty, dysfunction to functional, disorder to order. In the early 1900s, Pope Pius X wrote a letter to the Church. The world was in turmoil and chaos and World War I, the “Great War,” was on the verge of starting. He wrote: “We were terrified beyond all else by the disastrous state of human society today. For who can fail to see that society is at the present time, more than in any past age, suffering from a terrible and deep-rooted malady which, developing every day and eating into its inmost being, is dragging it to destruction?” That sounds like today, doesn’t it?

“The whole creation groans,” the Apostle Paul wrote (Romans 8:22). It — we — groan for restoration, to be brought back to our intended state, whether we know it or not. The hope of God’s people is that one day all of creation will be restored. We persevere because God doesn’t just make things better; we prevail because he has promised he is making all things (us included) new.

Contact Nancy Kennedy at 352-564-2927 (leave a message) or email at nkennedy@chronicleonline.com .

Grace Notes The coming restoration

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Gadsden County Extension Column￼ Gadsden County hosts annual spring festival and plant sale

THE DIRT ROAD WONDERGWYNN PEACOCK KIDDWe were a bit wild and wooly

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Gadsden County Extension Column Gadsden County hosts annual spring festival and plant sale

THE DIRT ROAD WONDERGWYNN PEACOCK KIDD
We were a bit wild and wooly