27/08/2022
Worth the read God is speaking to someone today Is it you? ❤️
At the beginning of a new year, I usually pick a word I want to represent the twelve months ahead. It’s become a more meaningful practice to me than setting goals.
I’ve had all kinds of words in the last few years: Strong. Home. Joy. Freedom. But on this particular year, I found myself reading the book of Jeremiah in the Bible when I came across a line that surprised me:
“The city will be rebuilt on her ruins.” (Jeremiah 30:18 NIV) Just that line. I’d never noticed it before. At this point in the story, the Prophet Jeremiah was giving the Israelites some hope that there would be healing and rebuilding in their land after a long stretch of ruins. He was declaring that every level of society would be renewed in the coming days, that people would live in towns built on mounds of rubble.
This is not what I think happens to the ruins in my own story. I do not look at the ugly mounds or pieces of scrap metal and see something to build on. I see something worth hiding away and covering up. But to know God is to know he wants your best. Day after day, he wants the most unscripted and unedited version of you. He can always work with that.
Because here’s the truth: God uses all the pieces. Every little thing. Nothing is wasted. Even when he builds the new in us, he is reaching back to use the old. A few months ago, I was digging deep into Isaiah 43:19—the part where God leans in and says, “Don’t look back. I’m doing a new thing.” The phrase “new thing” in the Hebrew is chadash. It means fresh and new (not surprisingly). But if you look even closer, you will learn that the root of this word means “to rebuild, renew, repair.” The prefix re means “again and again and again.” So God is saying to us, “I’m not discounting what you’ve walked through. I am using the stories you swore would discount you, and I am piecing them together to bring you to something new.”
Over the parts of our stories we want to white out or forget for good, God says, “Hey, I see what you’ve been through. I’m renewing that. I’m renewing you. Again and again and again. I am taking all the broken pieces and rebuilding you on what you thought would destroy you.”
By Hannah Brencher
