OUT OF THE RUINS

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

The Lord will surely comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; He will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of singing.

Isaiah 51:3

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

I remember the time well. I had just found out that my wife had been unfaithful to me and that discovery set me on the road to the ruins.

It happened just two days before I was supposed to leave on my first Navy deployment and despite my pleadings, the Navy would not allow me to stay behind to try and get things in order. Rather, I went to sea and saw my family as I knew it intact for the last time.

Six weeks later, I returned, only because my service contract was expiring and I decided to not reenlist so I could get back home and see if I could try and piece my life back together. The first signs that it wasn’t going to happen came when I entered the place I had lived with my family and found them gone and all my things haphazardly strewn about. I would discover that my wife and kids weren’t far away. They were only next door with the neighbor my wife had decided to have a tryst with.

As you can imagine, it was a maddening time. The ruins can be like that.

I had to get away to keep my sanity and chose to accept a job in Southern Maryland. I found a new place to stay and then found a second job so I could meet my expenses which included supporting my two daughters who I was able to visit every other week, driving to Virginia to get them, returning to Maryland for the weekend, and then returning them on Sunday before coming back to get ready for another work week. That was the routine for awhile as I sat in the ruins of what my life had become and hoped that escape might come one day.

I rejoined the Navy six months after I had separated and was able to restart my career. This was the first step the Lord gave me as I started to rise up and find a new life in Him. Each day, he helped heal me a little more as I regained my professional career, with pay and benefits to meet my obligations, and started to explore a social life again, something that was very hard as I was married for nearly 10 years at the point the infidelity occurred.

That social life included doing some volunteer work as I always had enjoyed helping others and making a difference. My ship had adopted a local elementary school and the opportunity was there for Sailors to go into the classrooms and serve as aides for the teachers, assisting them while being positive mentors for the kids. I was assigned to two third grade classes and worked faithfully with them for many months.

One day as I was leaving the school, I ran into the Assistant Principal and we had a nice conversation. We had spoken to one another on a few other occasions but this particular discussion turned more toward things outside of the workplace. She had mentioned she was going to the movies and so I asked her if she was going alone, trying to muster some courage to ask her out if she was. Unfortunately, she had a date but left me with words that alluded to the fact that it wasn’t a serious relationship. And so, I thought I would see if she would maybe consider going to dinner, sending flowers to her at school with an invitation. The next week when I was in the building again, we ran into each other and she accepted. And that dinner date would be the start of many blessed years together, now counting twenty-four. In that chance encounter and the relationship that blossomed, the Lord has fully pulled me out of the ruins.

Why do I share this with you?

Because it’s a true story about a real life matter, one that many people go through. You see, there are any number of circumstances that can result in us being left in the ruins of what our lives used to be. Maybe it’s relationship-related but it can also be financial in nature or maybe health-related or even as a result of some form of addiction.

There are a lot of ways we can find ourselves in ruins but there is only one person who can bring us out and that is the Lord God Almighty. That’s the message in this devotion today and it’s the message we find in the third verse of Isaiah 51. Look again at the words here:

The Lord will surely comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; He will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of singing.  Isaiah 51:3

The people of Israel (referred to here as Zion) were certainly in the ruins of life. Their nation of Judah and beloved holy city of Jerusalem had been ransacked and laid to waste by the invading Babylonians who took the people who survived the siege into custody and hauled them away into a seventy year exile.

Think about seventy years of hardship. It would be enough to steal away the hope from anyone and made my three years of struggle seem pale by comparison.

And yet, Israel would not be in the ruins forever. God’s word through the prophet Isaiah assured as much.

For better days were ahead for God’s chosen people, days when He would look on their ruins with compassion and set plans in motion for them to return home to rebuild their homes, their lives, and their faith in Him. The desolation they had experienced would transform into the beauty of Eden; their wastelands would become lush and fertile gardens. Their weeping would turn to joy, their sorrows would be washed away by gladness, leaving them thankful and singing praises unto the Lord who rescued them from their circumstances. Read the books of Ezra and Nehemiah and you'll see how the Lord made good on what He promised to do.

Friends, I can tell you first hand that when the Lord pulls you out of the ruins, your life does indeed model the poetic beauty spoken by Isaiah in this verse, punctuated by the joy and gladness and praising that comes from knowing you’ve been delivered into a new life filled with light and love and new opportunity as you leave the darkness and struggles behind.

If you’re in the ruins today, I pray this encourages you to never give up, ever. For the Lord has a plan for you, a plan to deliver you from your ruins and into the Eden of His rescue and refuge. In Him, better days are always ahead.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.

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