Restoration

My last two posts were on the subject of 'rescue' and 'recovery', and recently the word 'restoration' has been on my mind.  It reminded me of three stages of the Lord's intervention in my life.  The first stage being the necessity of the gospel of Christ and His saving power initially being in my life.  The second stage being my gentle recovery as a baby in Him, going through the 'milk' feeding of  what I must do to be saved.  The third stage involving the Lord's 'restoration' of me, and my maturing in Christ as spoken about in Hebrews ch. 6 v.1 'Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God,'

 

An incident that happened in my life kept coming into my mind which I had put into a little booklet that I had created on my computer some years back.  I would like to share it as a testimony of how I felt the Lord speaking to me on this occasion.  I presented it in my booklet as a letter to the Lord, and called the article :-

Beautiful white messenger

Dear Lord,

My darling little dove was in distress, and I could not bear to see her unable to walk, with wing feathers snapped and bleeding from where she had futilely flapped against the cardboard sides of her pen, trying to gain control.  She had been with me for fourteen months and I had grown to love her very much.  I had found her injured in the grounds of the local psychiatric hospital, and You had given me hope for her in the words 'With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible' when I had sought You to heal her.  You even had me see a van with the words ' Console yourself ' written on the side that afternoon, knowing how I would respond to those words. 

And so I did not take her to the vet, but made her as comfortable as I could in the large brick shed at the bottom of our garden, believing that You would heal her, and that she would eventually go back to the grounds of the hospital.
 

 

For nearly fourteen months I had  cared for her, feeding her, washing her, watching her slowly regain the strength to stand and walk with the aid of flapping her wings.  Often I wondered why You did not heal her fully, why I did not see in this little bird the kind of power I had seen in some of my own situations.  I thought of the times You had brought about supernatural healing in my body, sometimes immediately, sometimes over a period of time, and then I also realised that some physical ailments I have had for years, and I had to accept there was, and still is, so much I do not know about Your ways, that 'the secret things belong to God, those revealed belong to us.' (Deuteronomy ch.29 v.29)

Although it was hard over the months to see the dove unable to fly, there were also good times when I learned little things about her personality, such as how she would flick her wing slightly when she was annoyed with my fussing over her.  Constantly I prayed for her and along the way You had spoken to me straight from Your written word, as You did the day I had cleared the work bench in front of the window in the shed, and built a large pen of strong cardboard, open with a covered section at one end.  It looked like a boat and reminded me of Noah's ark.  I had cut a window in the covered part, with a raised platform in front of it so that she could look out through the large window of the shed into the garden, and had been both thrilled and amused to see that, when she had eaten and drunk from the open part of her pen,  she would flap her wings and almost run back to the covered section to jump up onto the platform and sit looking out of her window. 

That morning after I had made her comfortable in her new home I went indoors, picked up my Bible to read, and opened it straight to a scripture that I had encircled some time earlier for some reason.  It was in Isaiah ch.60 v.8 and spoke about the returning exiles flying 'like doves to their windows.'

It was then I began to connect my little dove to Your church Lord, and I felt that there was something greater than physical healing involved here.  I could see as I read the passage containing this scripture, that this was talking about Your people Israel, and the little dove was being used to convey to me Your love for Your church,  (spiritual Israel)  that was in the same spiritual state, and Your desire to have us to return to You and walk in Your ways.  You had brought me to read other scripture where Israel is referred to as a dove, and I pondered on the fact that if I could love this little injured dove enough to want to do all I could to make it comfortable and to pray for it to be healed, how much greater Your love and compassion to want we, Your spiritually injured people, to be put right and return to You, and for us to want to pray for one another accordingly.

I have always found it very easy to love all creatures, and get very distressed when I see them injured, even to the point that I can not kill a spider or use slug pellets in the garden.  I thought about Jonah who had more concern for the gourd than he'd had for the people of Nineveh, and had to admit that there was a similarity with me and people in the church sometimes if I allowed my natural emotions to dictate in my life, and probably other Christians felt that way about me sometimes too.  And so I had prayed for myself and all of Your church, according to what You had revealed to me, believing that it was Your will.

There were the times when the little dove made me laugh, like when I put a new high energy seed in her dish and she jumped from her platform, raced towards it and spread her wing over it as if to stop me from having any of it.  Then there was the day when her leg seemed to be particularly bad and I sought You once again.  You had highlighted another scripture to me in the same way.   This time it was ' Do not hand over the life of your dove to wild beasts; do not forget the lives of your afflicted people forever.' ( Psalm ch. 74 v.19 ), and I had prayed this both for my little dove and Your church.  After she had been with me about twelve months her feathers had renewed themselves to the extent that she was eventually lovely and white again with fine long tail feathers.

And so it had continued, for fourteen months I had cared for the little dove, my love for it bringing me to seek Your help, Your word causing me to see Your love for the church, and bringing me to pray for both. 

And now this!  I had gone in to see her and she was huddled in a corner with wing feathers and tail feathers snapped and covered in blood.  She could no longer walk, and when she tried to she spun round  helplessly with her constant flapping propelling her all over the place.  I had to ask myself if You was trying to show me the state that Your church is in.  Once again I prayed and You gave me scripture from Jeremiah ch. 33 'Behold I will bring to it health and healing, and I will lead them and reveal to them abundance of prosperity and security.  I will restore the fortunes of Judah and the fortunes of Israel, and rebuild them as they were at first.  I will cleanse them from all the guilt of their sin against me, and I will forgive all the guilt of their sin and rebellion against me.' 

Several days went by and she had not improved.  I felt I could no longer bear to see her suffering and telephoned the Bird Hospital.  A very kind lady answered the phone and I tearfully explained the situation.  Her response was so compassionate, saying that the kindest thing would be to put the little bird to sleep, that I felt as if someone had come alongside me to remove the burden from me, and I arranged to take the dove to the hospital that morning.

I placed the little bird in a cardboard box making her as comfortable as I could on some towelling, and set off for the Bird Hospital with the box on my lap while my husband drove the car.  I felt desperately sad, silently crying as we journeyed, feeling that I had failed the little bird, and You Lord, by not being able to ignore what I saw happening and wait for a miracle, as Abraham had when told to sacrifice his son.  Wasn't that what You had wanted me to do when You had said that ' all things were possible with God ', and shown me the words ' console yourself '?  Yet the little bird seemed at ease, allowing me to stroke her head without pecking at my fingers.  I felt there was a peace about her, almost as if she was relieved at not having to struggle to walk any more.  She just sat there looking around, quite settled, even preening her feathers a little. 

I felt confused, sad ...... and yet peaceful at the same time, and it crossed my mind that the scriptures regarding Abraham and his son had never been shown me for the bird.

On the way to the Bird Hospital I noticed a poster advertising a film called 'Flight plan'.  The words stood out to me and I felt that You was speaking to me through them, telling me that You was in command of the bird's situation, even though I did not understand what was going on, and the scripture 'Every day of my life was written in His book before even one of them was yet formed' drifted into my mind, confirming to me that You knew what I was going to do on this particular day before it came along, that it was written into God's plan for a purpose and I felt, rather than understood,  the depth of your love and compassion.   Love and compassion for me in knowing that what You was allowing regarding the bird was more than I could bear, and making a way out.  Love and compassion for the bird in its apparent peace, comfort and acceptance in its situation.  I had seen this love of Yours in a similar situation with a little cat that I had loved dearly, and I felt that the bird would fly, but not in the way I had expected.  I was reminded of my 'death experience' when I was twenty eight, and that where You are there is no death, only love and joy and peace of mind, that in You we are Spirit and that the dove was also part of the whole of creation that awaits adoption.

Sometime after we had passed the poster I asked my husband what 'flight plan' meant.  He said that every aircraft had to have a plan before it took off, with details of all that would go on from setting off to destination, and that the film advertised was about a woman who got on a plane with her daughter.  She fell asleep during the flight, and when she awoke her daughter was missing.  I had a strong feeling that it was right that the dove would disappear from my life that day.  At that moment we passed another poster advertising the film, and I felt as if You was confirming what I was thinking.  We had to leave the main road to travel down a long, winding, very rough path to get to the Bird Hospital and, both as we left the main road and rejoined it on the way back home the same white van was, incredibly, in front of us.  It had a number plate which included the name 'Ruth' in it, which means 'female friend', and the kindness and compassion of the lady who met us at the reception, the lady I had already spoken to on the phone, was such that I felt that even she had been placed there on that day by You Lord, for the very purpose of doing what she would do.

She had offered to come up to meet us at the point where the lane met the main road.  We had declined the offer but I felt even that had emphasised that she was the 'female friend', the 'Ruth' sent by You Lord.  Later, I sent her a little book of spiritual poems that I have written and prayed that my God would become her God also, just as Naomi's God had become Ruth's God. 

For days after I felt so sad and confused, praying to You for understanding of what the last fourteen months was about.  Then You showed me in Ezekiel ch. 14 how Your judgements came upon Your people because of their idolatry and how Ezekiel would be consoled by the fact that God did not judge without cause.  It was the word 'console' that stirred my spirit.  I started to realise that right from the beginning, though I had been praying for the physical dove, Your Holy Spirit had been praying for Spiritual Israel, Gods church on earth.

When I looked at the whole situation of the dove through God's eyes I could see that she had been used to portray to me that salvation of the soul through the Holy Spirit involves the 'destruction of the flesh', the putting to death that which is carnal.  This is the healing that You want for us.  You had been showing me right from the beginning that this healing was not possible with man, that it was impossible for mankind to save itself, but that salvation was possible with God, and had told me to console myself.  You had also shown me that You would not leave the soul of Your dove to the wild beasts, that You had left Your Holy Spirit on earth to be our teacher as You revealed Your instruction to us through the scriptures, showing us daily what was good and what was evil in Your sight by using former Israel as examples.

I realised that the blood on my little dove had been like the guilt of our sin against You but that just as You had brought her to Yourself You would bring us to Yourself if we followed the 'flight plan', the plan of salvation You have for every individual in Your church. 

That Sunday as I sat at my computer to start to write this, I put a music c.d on and the first song that was sung was 'Be Thou my vision'.  Later that evening I asked my husband to put songs of praise on and, as he turned it on, the song being sung was 'Be Thou my vision', Your voice telling me that in order for me to win the race of salvation I must see all things through Your eyes.

When I first had my little dove I called her 'Beauty', because she was beautiful.  When my sister first saw her she called her 'Gwyn', the Welsh word for white.  When I told my friend in Lancashire about her she called her 'Angel', meaning messenger, and even these things were written into Your plan for me Lord, because You sent her to me as Your beautiful, white messenger.  I thank You Lord for the little dove, I know that she is with You.  Through all of this, help me to look back on my own carnal weakness, but to move forward in Your Spiritual strength.  Bring me to love and pray for my spiritual brothers and sisters in the way You would have all of us love and pray for one another, unconditionally, as I did for Your beautiful white messenger.

Lord I thank You

Lord I thank You for Your love
for all You taught me through Your dove
I know You had her come that day
'though she was never meant to stay
that I be shown through Spirit eye
that flesh it is that has to die
So help me Lord to run the race
to love all people by Your grace
that I might truly do in You
the work that You called me to do


Saturday, November 3rd

Today, the day after I put this post on my blog, I opened my Bible to read and opened straight to the page with this Psalm on.


'Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!  It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments; As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the LORD commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.'   Psalm 133