by Pastor Doug Brauner

The Hope for Change

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud link.

I was disappointed when I ran across this sign at one of my favorite photo destinations in Colorado Springs. How dare they clean up the mess that had taken years to perfect! I was being kept from a banged up metal picnic table, a creek strewn with fallen tree branches, not to mention careless litter in various forms of decay.

This is the stuff photographers drool over.

I heard chain saws and watched workers carry out branches. I even thought I saw them removing a bush that had served as the focal point of a few former pics. Ugh.

“Caution. Restoration Work in Progress. Do Hot Enter” NOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Is that the way we think about the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives? We don’t want to change?

Modern society likes to celebrate the mangled picnic tables, broken branches, and trash of our lives. Social media pops up with some celebrity experiencing disaster and we can’t click on the link quick enough. We want to hear the dirt, the disgusting details of someone’s failure.

“I will be found by you, declares the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.” 
Jeremiah 29:14 English Standard Version

God sees us as beautiful restoration projects.

The Holy Spirit uses the mangled cross on which Jesus died to work this miracle of restoration, a miracle that might warrant a different kind of warning sign, “Caution. Restoration Work in Progress. PLEASE ENTER.” We are invited into God’s work. It is a work of hope that life doesn’t have to look like a mangled picnic table or broken branches.

It is a work that God loves to do in us. Things will be different when we pass under the rope.

Copyright Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado