There is beauty in the brokeness

God’s glory is on tour in the skies,
    God-craft on exhibit across the horizon.
 

Madame Day holds classes every morning,
    Professor Night lectures each evening.

Their words aren’t heard,
    their voices aren’t recorded,
But their silence fills the earth:
    unspoken truth is spoken everywhere.

            Psalm 19:1-2 (Message translation)

God tells us that He made everything perfect: perfect trees, perfect mountains, perfect cows, perfect people. 

But then because of the old there-must-be-greener-grass mentality, it broke. 

Trees rot. 

Mountains collapse. 

Cows get sick. 

People die. 

This is not how it was supposed to be. It is not perfect. 

Thankfully, God can, and does, turn all things to his glory. 

 
Now in putting everything in subjection to him, 

he left nothing outside his control. 

At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.

                                                                    Hebrews 2:7-8

How does this play out in daily living?

Well look at say, sand. 

What is it? 

Broken rocks,  bits of garbage glass and dead sea animals. 

Look at fall leaves. Why do we see the colors?

The leaves that are about to die. 

But sand is beautiful and Fall takes our breath away. 

So even in the midst of brokenness we see beauty.

Not that the brokenness is beautiful in and of itself. 

That is not in Gods' character:

 God didn’t set us up for an angry rejection 

but for salvation by our Master, Jesus Christ. 

He died for us, a death that triggered life. 

                                  1 Thessalonians 5:9 

 The sovereign God is there, doing what He does best...and only he can do. 

Restore. 

I was changed by a man wearing bird on his head

I sat spell-bound as a missionary named John Cutts began his talk at the church where I was serving as the assistant. He had an image of men wearing only feather, paint and long gourds holding  poison-tipped hunting arrows up on the huge TV screen we had rented for his presentation. 

"I'm not sure how this pictures will go over, 

but I wanted to show you a picture of one of the 

people you will be feasting with at the banquet

for all of eternity!"

I'll be honest, as a white-bread-suberbian-Connecticut-kid who never heard of missionaries growing up it took me a while to let the image and the force of the message settle in. 

"This is your brother. 

When the Bible talks about every tongue, tribe, and nation

this is what it means. 

This is your family. 

John began to tell us about how these followers of Christ have ceased tribal warfare and now go to villages to spread the message of the love of Jesus to people who once killed their own. War took up most of their lives, as did the fear that came along with it. 

But then they heard of the God who died for them, 

and their lives were never the same. 

The area of Papau, New Guinea where these children of God live is a never-ending sea of ridges and valleys that form a near impenetrable fortress between themselves and other tribes as well as the outside world.  The depth of isolation caused this region to birth a full one-fifth of the worlds' languages. Love from the outside world desired to bring iron axes, medicine and water but the planes could not land until an airstrip was built. 

This village had spent 28 years clearing the land by hand! Impressive indeed!

But it was the story John told of the airstrip that failed that changed my life for ever. 

"They make a test of the new airstrip in an unloaded plane. The big day had come and the whole village cheered as the plane landed. 

The pilot got emerged from his cockpit and was instantly surrounded with cheers and yelling. 

He had a lump in his throat as he delivered the news;

'I am sorry, but this strip will not work with a fully loaded plane'

the villagers didn't say a word but went and picked up their primitive tools and began to build a new strip right along side the one the had just spent ten years working on. 

Baffled at the lack of complaint he asked one of the elders about it. He replied;

If we don't build this new airstrip the villages 

down rive will never get medicine. 

If they don't get medicine, they will die. 

If they die, they will never hear of Jesus. 

We cannot let that happen. 

If I die before I finish the work, 

my children will continue."

These villagers understood what Jacob saw when the angels ascended and descended the ladder from heaven. They went about the tasks God gave them to do, without fear, without grumbling, without complaint.  

They trusted the end of the story and so lived it out in the middle. 

May we do the same. 

God gave me the bird because he loved me

He will cover you with his pinions,
    and under his wings you will find refuge;
    his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.

       Psalm 91:4

Years ago I adopted a chronic feather-plucking Yellow Naped Dwarf Macaw parrot named "Randy". I was his eleventh owner in nine years.

It was a love born of pity: he was ugly but cute, loved me but hated women, and like all parrots needed the same amount of care as a baby for good health. 

His feathers began to grow back, and he got nicer. 

He was insanely lovable as all rescued things are. Randy would lie on my chest and I would rub his back as his feathers grew in. I could see his new pin-feathers, and watch his veins pump and  his heart beat under his skin. 

This ugly-nobody-wanted-feather-plucking-bird taught me about the character of God as told in Psalm 91:4.

When you are under a wing, you feel a heart beat

When you under a wing, you feel warm

When you are under a wing, you become as near as one-flesh

But it gets better. 

God  also promised to be our shield. That's protection in battle. That's keeping us from harm and death. 

And God said he is our buckler, not "belt-buckle". That just keeps our pant up. 

The buckler holds the sword. The sword is our weapon. It destroys the things trying to destroy us. 

Warmth, love, defense, protection. 

When besieged,
    I’m calm as a baby.
When all hell breaks loose,
    I’m collected and cool.

                                                                                Psalm 27:3 (Message translation)