Daily Meditation: "Restoration"

SCRIPTURE

"Live creatively, friends. If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day's out." - Galatians 6: 1-10

REFLECTION

Boy, Paul gives some great advice here. Would that more people lived this way!

We’re really good at tearing each other to bits. A five-minute trip through any social media platform and the “Comments” section of any of them will easily supply you with example after example of all of the creative ways folks come up with to tear other people down. We’re really good at it.

Paul, on the other hand, says that when other people fall instead of helping to keep them down we should do all we can, creatively, to lift them up. “Restore” them, he says. It’s all about restoration and not destruction. Can you imagine how different things would be if that’s how we behaved towards one another?

He also gives us some realistic advice: save your criticism for yourself and stop spending so much energy condemning others since you might be the one in need of restoration at any given moment.

It takes, as Paul says, creativity to live this way, and the energy put into that creativity can be a restorative power that can heal and empower rather than damage and tear down. Each of us needs restoration on any given day for a whole multitude of reasons. Loving our neighbor as ourselves means lifting each other up when our neighbors fall, just as we would hope that our neighbor would lift us up when we’re down.

To restore and be restored, for Paul, is creative living. Let’s set about the business of being as creative as we possibly can.

PRAYER

God Who Builds Us Up, grant us the creative wisdom and vision to restore broken spirits and broken lives, remembering our own broken spaces and how we desire restoration, too.

Amen.

Peace,

Shawn