Perceptions #200112

"Restoring the Years"

by Richard Rogers

I will restore to you the years that the locusts have eaten." - Joel 2:25

The greatest problems of the conscience are not the wrong things we've done, but wrong relationships. We may have been saved, but what have done about those that we've wronged? It is of no use to sit down and say, "It's irreparable now. I cannot alter it now. Thank God, He can alter it."

We may try to repair the damage in our own way, by apologizing, by writing letters, but it is not a simple easy matter or something to apologize for. Behind the veil of human lives God begins to reveal the tragedies of Hell. Or we may say, "I have been atoned for, therefore I do not need to think about the past, and it is just here that the tyranny of nerves and the bondage of Satan comes in. The shores of time are strewn with ruined friendships, irreparable severance's through tremendous twist, then comes the strange distress, "How can we repair it?"

Many a sensitive soul has been driven to insanity through anguish of mind because he has never realized what Jesus came to do, and all the asylums in the world will never touch them in the realization of what the death of Jesus means, that is, that the damage we've done may be repaired through the efficiency of the cross.

Jesus Christ has atonement for all, and he can make it good enough, not only as a gift, but as a participation on their part. The miracle of the grace of God is that he can make the past as though it had never been. He can "restore the years that the locusts have eaten, the cankerworm and the caterpillar and the palmer worm..." Thank God he can restore!

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