I consider myself to be a pretty good cook, but I’m definitely not a chef. As a cook, I can follow a recipe, make a few simple changes, and usually prepare tasty food. A chef understands details of all kinds of ingredients and effectively uses many diverse cooking techniques to create a wide range of flavorful, healthy, and visually appealing meals. Many people can appreciate a good meal. Fewer folks can prepare a gourmet meal. Even fewer understand the complexity of food science. The best scientists understand only a tiny portion of all the chemical changes happening during cooking.
One way to consider history is the sequence of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration (or New Creation). God’s Creation is impressive and awe inspiring. The recent pictures from NASA's Webb and Hubble space telescopes display God’s incredibly creative beauty and power. My successes in the kitchen have increased my wonder with God’s creation. But my failures in the kitchen have led me to be even more amazed with God’s promised Redemption and Restoration of His fallen Creation.
Creation is like being invited to a dinner party hosted by a great chef. The meal is wonderful. Each course complements all the others. Everything is perfectly cooked. Nothing is too salty or tough. All the flavors are delicately balanced. Now imagine if I hosted a dinner party but as I prepared the food, I oversalted this, burnt that, and added the wrong ingredients here-and-there, making a great deal of unpalatable food. The chef walks in, looks at my mess in the kitchen, gives me a quick hug, and tells me to go be with my guests. Soon the chef calls everyone to dinner, and my inedible food has been transformed into a gourmet feast that’s every bit as good as the meal the chef made earlier. That’s Restoration. Transforming my spoiled efforts into something beautiful shows a whole other level of awesome expertise.
Do you remember the old folk tale of the pig and the chicken? They were walking on the farm one day and they decided they should do something nice for the family that ran the farm and took such good care of them. The chicken suggested that they prepare a delicious breakfast of bacon and eggs for the whole family. The pig pointed out that for the chicken, the eggs were merely a contribution to the meal. But for the pig, bacon was a complete commitment. God’s Redemption and Restoration also required a far greater cost to Him than His Creation.
At Creation, God merely said, “let there be …”, and Creation occurred. But the cost of Redemption and Restoration for Jesus included leaving the glory of Heaven, humbling Himself to become a man, taking our sin upon Himself, being separated from His Father, and dying a terrible death to save His people from their sin. In Redemption and Restoration we see aspects of God’s character that we do not see in Creation including courage, self-sacrificing love, obedience, and wrath. God’s amazing redemptive love and grace also shows us how valuable God’s people are to Him.
No matter how much or how frequently or how badly we sin, God’s grace, mercy and forgiveness can redeem us and can restore our ugliness into something beautiful. In the 17th century, Sir Edwin Landseer was England’s foremost painter of animals. One evening he was having dinner at an inn when folks at the next table accidentally spilled hot tea on a newly whitewashed wall. The men were apologetic, but the innkeeper saw the stained wall and was angry. Landseer offered to help. He created a beautiful sketch of a stag in a grassy meadow on the wall using the stain as part of the deer. Landseer took that ugly stain and make something beautiful out of it. When we get discouraged about the mess we’ve made in our life, remember that Jesus can bring something beautiful from our lives with His redemptive and restoring power.