I have 3 kids on antibiotics for various ailments at the moment and I feel the beginnings of a sinus headache coming on. Thankfully, I have every reason to think that these ailments will pass and that my kids and my sinuses will be whole again in relatively short order. I am grateful for this because hitting the tipping point into middle age, where your friends and family start getting serious or chronic health diagnoses, maybe not often, but often enough to hit close to home, is a transition at the best of times. Reaching this point in life during “The COVID Years” has magnified it.
So, after walking with people I love for the past couple of years through some pretty heavy stuff, we are in a moment of calm, of rebuilding. I’m reading in Ezra, where the Israelites have been allowed to return to Jerusalem to rebuild after the Babylonians had ransacked the temple and taken them into captivity. So this stood out to me this morning:
“10And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests in their vestments came forward with trumpets, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals, to praise the Lord, according to the directions of David king of Israel. 11And they sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to the Lord,
“For he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever toward Israel.”
And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. 12But many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers’ houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, though many shouted aloud for joy, 13so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping, for the people shouted with a great shout, and the sound was heard far away.”
Ezra 3:10-13 ESV
Once something has been broken it is never quite the same. Restored things bring a joy, but also a grief at what is forever lost. It won’t always be this way though.
The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel. The first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, 20the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst.
Revelation 21:19-20 ESV
That foundation won’t be the flawed result of repairing a broken thing. It will have all the perfected glory of a new thing, something that will endure and can never be touched by sorrow or pain.
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
Revelation 21:1-4 ESV
Writ & Whimsy 
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