Restorer of Life
“Then the women said to Naomi, ‘Blessed be the
LORD, who has not left you this day without a close relative; and may his name
be famous in Israel! And may he be to
you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age; for your
daughter-in-law, who loves you, who is better to you than seven sons, has borne
him.” Ruth 4:14-15
The son’s name was Obed. He was the father of Jesse, who was the
father of David. His name was famous
through all Israel, and the entire Christian world. Obed did restore, or return back, to Naomi,
her joy. No longer would she cry out
“call me Mara” (bitter), for the Lord had been gracious to her.
Picture in your mind someone
laboring over a piece of wood, stripping away the varnish and stain, until the
wood is restored back to its beautiful original product. This creates a great image of God’s process
of restoration in our lives. Once we
have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, we then can choose to allow God to
restore us back to our beautiful original product – created in the image of God
Himself! This process will be
labor-intensive, time consuming, and not always easy. We all have several coats of stain covering
us. We might have layer after layer of
varnish that has been applied over our lifetimes. The stripping and removal of all that covers
the “real us” can at times be painful.
Yet God knows best, as He made us and knows what we are truly to look
like and be like. The world may have
concealed the real you – if you let Him, Jesus will reveal the real you!
The process
of restoration is the continual process of returning, or turning back, to our
Father and our Creator, despite our many mistakes. Each time we return to Him, we find He
lovingly removes the varnish, the stains, and continues the process of refining
us back to our original condition. After
all, we are the apple of His eye. After
each experience, we find ourselves more Christlike and less like ourselves;
that the “old man” before we were saved is being transformed into the “new man”
He eternally intended for us to be.
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