For the last four years I’ve been involved in a two-phase rebuilding project for work, which has been plagued by delay after delay. The timeframe for completion keeps getting pushed further and further out. Some have been tempted to give up and just complete phase one. I suspect this is par for the course for most rebuilding projects. Many of us are surprised to find the same is true when it comes to rebuilding our lives. BY MAJOR SUE HAY
When we are broken we expect the process of healing to be done and dusted quickly. In fact, restoration may take many years as God progressively rebuilds the parts of our lives which have been broken. 20 WarCry 23 JANUARY 2021
Broken Walls of a Broken Nation It seems that God is in the business of restoring both broken walls and broken people. The story of Nehemiah and the broken down walls around Jerusalem offers an example of just how God does that. The city of Jerusalem had been destroyed earlier by an attack from enemy nations. At the time most of the people ended up in exile. But as the exiles trickled back into the city one of the first things the people set out to rebuild was the temple. The temple was the heart of both the city and the life of this God-worshipping nation. They needed it restored to allow their daily rhythms of life to get back to normal. But once the life of the nation felt more settled they lost the motivation to complete phase two of their rebuilding project. The work of rebuilding stopped. The people were too fragile and too worn out to muster enough energy to restore
the broken down walls of the city. This left the city very vulnerable to attack from external forces.
Complete the Project A similar thing can happen for us as we seek to recover from the destructive forces we experience as we journey through life: we begin a personal restoration process, but once life settles down again we may not feel the need to carry on and complete the whole process. If we have ever experienced life unravelling we will know that facing up to and accepting the reality of our brokenness starts to bring us some relief. This is the work of step one of the Twelve Steps programme. In step two we grapple with the idea that there could be a God out there with enough power to restore our sense of wellbeing, and in step three we find the courage to hand over our life and will to the care of this God. And that process can initially
