ruined

This black turkey appears ruined. We cooked it in a smoker Jason made from an old oil drum. Though we may have subtracted years from our lives, we enjoyed that turkey. Inside it was moist and delicious. Thanksgiving 2003. Tela, HondurasWhen Isaiah saw the Lord in the temple, he responded with an accurate assessment of who he was. Ruined. A man of unclean lips. A dead man. 

Then he transformed before us in the passage. As he lay on the temple floor in the posture of one dead, an angel flew over and touched his lips with a live coal from the altar. The angel said, “your sin is atoned for.” 

The voice of the Lord boomed, “Whom shall I send?”

Miraculously, Isaiah answered, “Send me.”

From ruined and dead to forgiven and available: this is quite a transformation!

Sitting in and naming our ruins feels like death. We feel like Isaiah sprawled out  before the Lord. We cannot even lift our heads. And as we name the truth about our state: broken, the Lord puts the coal to our lips. We transform to His Servant, His Beloved. 

Ruined. Shipwrecked. Stripped naked. Destitute. This feels like death and it is the closest to rebirth we can be. We may as well crawl back into our mother’s womb and be reborn like Nicodemus suggested. This place of extreme discomfort and pain is the beginning of new life.

Whether it is a simple turning of your path from pride to humility or the exposure of hidden and devastating sin, new life begins when we name our state. Ruined. Broken. Desperate. 

He takes the charred ruins and builds something breathtaking.

I remember the turkey, the hurricane, Val's first taste of whiskey, the musty resort, and a belly-full of gratitude.

“I’ll give you a full life in the emptiest of places - firm muscles, strong bones. You’ll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew, rebuild the foundations from out of your past. Isaiah 58:9-12