Tag: Restoration

Morning Musing: Zechariah 1:8-9

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“I looked out in the night and saw a man riding on a chestnut horse. He was standing among the myrtle trees in the valley. Behind him were chestnut, brown, and white horses. I asked, ‘What are these, my lord?’ The angel who was talking to me replied, ‘I will show you what they are.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Discipline is not fun. It’s not fun and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who takes the opposite opinion. It certainly doesn’t appear in the Scriptures. The most explicit reference to discipline there comes from the writer of Hebrews who says it plainly: “No discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful.” This is doubly true when you are the one doing the disciplining and the object of your effort is your children. When the discipline is over, though, what is needed then? We get a glimpse of that here in Zechariah’s first vision.

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Morning Musing: Zephaniah 3:8-9

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“Therefore, wait for me — this is the Lord’s declaration — until the day I rise up for plunder. For my decision is to gather nations, to assemble kingdoms, in order to pour out my indignation on them, all my burning anger; for the whole earth will be consumed by the fire of my jealousy. For I will then restore pure speech to the peoples so that all of them may call on the name of the Lord and serve him with a single purpose.”
— ‭‭Zephaniah‬ ‭3:8-9‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter)

I remember reading the first Lord of the Rings book when I was in college. The only thing I regretted was that I waited so long to read it. I eventually burned through the second and third books on a single week trip to South Carolina with my family that summer. After finishing the first book, I remember talking to a friend and being absolutely distraught that Gandalf had died in the end. He just smiled a knowing smile and said, “Keep reading.” What He knew was that the story wasn’t over. That’s a pretty good reminder for what we see here.

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Morning Musing: Micah 5:10-14

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“In that day — this is the Lord’s declaration — I will remove your horses from you and wreck your chariots. I will remove the cities of your land and tear down all your fortresses. I will remove sorceries from your hands, and you will not have any more fortune-tellers. I will remove your carved images and sacred pillars from you so that you will no longer worship the work of your hands. I will pull up the Asherah poles from among you and demolish your cities.”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter)

If you were to read these verses all by themselves and without knowing anything about what came before them, what would you think is Micah’s focus? What is “that day” in which God is going to do all of this removing and destroying? As a first guess you might go with something like the day of judgment. That would make sense. On what other day would God do all these kinds of things to the people? Well, as it turns out, that’s not quite right. In context, this all falls not on a day of judgment, but a day of restoration. What gives? Let’s talk about it.

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Digging in Deeper: Micah 5:7

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“Then the remnant of Jacob will be among many peoples like dew from the Lord, like showers on the grass, which do not wait for anyone or linger for mankind.”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter)

In English classes growing up, every couple of years we did a unit on poetry. Confessedly, I hated those units. Oh, I did fine in them. But I just don’t care for poetry all that much. Now, that’s not universal. I love the poetry of Shel Silverstein, for instance. But he wrote for kids so… I think the real reason I struggled to like it was that I struggled to understand the imagery being used. That same struggle is why many people—including me—stay away from the prophets in the Old Testament. The imagery is hard to understand. Yet if we’ll do the work to get our minds around it, there are riches to be had; riches like we find right here.

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Digging in Deeper: Genesis 3:15

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“I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter)

Brokenness was never supposed to be the state of things. When God designed the world and everything in it, to a certain extent it all reflected His image. It was all good. All of it. So good. As Moses describes God creating one thing after another, you can almost hear Him whistling while He worked He was so tickled at the goodness of it all. It’s like you felt when you were working on a big project and every single detail was falling exactly into place only on a much, much grander scale. It was all so good. And then it wasn’t. But brokenness was never supposed to be the state of things.

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