Redemption Would Have Been Enough, but…

My friend Brandon always likes to talk about the four ingredients of a good story, Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration. The reason this is so powerful? It follows the pattern of truth.

It’s mankind’s story…it’s our story.

We were created, we became broken, we were redeemed, now we are in the process of being put back together.

I’m convinced that redemption would have been enough for us to still praise God for all eternity. If he had redeemed us then left us in the destruction we created, we would still owe him everthing.

But he didn’t stop there.

He restores us.

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens understood this. He could’ve ended his wildly popular “A Christmas Carol” with Ebenezer Scrooge being “redeemed”. He could have screamed “I’m sorry!” to the city he had abused for profit. Dickens could then have described the internal change and bright new understanding the once miser was now living in. He could have stopped it there.

But he didn’t.

Dickens knew the story needed one final ingredient. Restoration. And so fastened in our hearts is this restorative story Scrooge was shamelessly singing from the top of his lungs. He made things right. And Tiny Tim sends us off into the wintry sunset with his exclamation, “God bless us, everyone”.

This is exactly what God does. He makes things torn apart whole. Broken systems. Broken governments. Broken relationships. Even broken economies. He is in the process of putting things back together.

And the crazy thing is…he is using us to do it.

Like Ebenezer Scrooge, we are God’s restorative force to the broken world around us. How cool is that?

It’s interesting that Dickens chooses to call his work a “carol”. Maybe Dickens knew that we were supposed to sing this restoration story with our lives.

A Christmas Carol