137: Never Beyond Repair
About a year ago, I shared in a Re{collection} letter {which, by the way, if you are not already signed up to receive The Re{collection} once a month, I’d love to include you! I’ll link to the sign up in the show notes}. Anyway, in one of those Re{collection} letters, about a year ago, I mentioned a show Brad and I discovered while we were over in Scotland. It’s called The Repair Shop. And let me tell you, it is a delight. Think Antiques Roadshow meets Great British Bakeoff meets your typical renovation show on HGTV. Like I said, delightful.
The basic premise is as follows: There is a little cottage workshop in the English countryside, and people from all over the UK bring in different items in need of repair. These items vary widely, from tools to toys to paintings to clothing to musical instruments to light fixtures. Truly, there is no end to what someone might bring in. Now, most of the items initially appear to belong in a junkyard or a trashcan. However, one thing they all have in common is that each and every item is also some sort of family heirloom.
These items have been in the family for years, decades, maybe even generations. And unfortunately, at some point, each heirloom became damaged goods—broken, faded, tattered, frayed. Again, at first glance, it might seem that the item isn’t worth keeping. But each family will tell you, their item carries with it moving stories and fond memories. Each heirloom belongs to each family in a deep and meaningful way. So, rather than tossing it out entirely, the family arrive and entrust their item into the care of the good people at the Repair Shop, with the hopes that their beloved heirloom might be restored.
That is the goal. And so, the Repair Shop staff get to work. We as the viewers tag along as they clean and polish and patch and paint and sew, all with the greatest of care and precision and expertise. It’s a fascinating process. And once the process is complete, of course, it’s then time for the big reveal.
Family members return to the workshop and the staff unveil their restored heirloom. Bright, fresh, clean, shiny, and functioning as it was intended to. As a viewer, you can feel the shock, awe, delight, and gratitude of the family, which is why {pro-tip} it is wise to have a tissue or two nearby while watching. In many ways, it’s as if a part of their family story has come back to life and we as viewers get to bear witness. I will tell you it stirs something within me each and every time.
It’s your typical feel-good show, for sure. And yet, I can’t help but wonder if the reason it resonates so deeply is that, on the smallest of scales, the premise of the show points me back to the story I’ve staked my life on. A story of hope that resides deep within my bones. But also a story I often lose sight of. A story I so often forget.
The truth is, there is much in our world and in our lives that can feel like damaged goods—broken hearts, broken people, broken relationships, systems, and communities. And amid those broken realities, it can be easy to lose hope—despairing, ignoring, abandoning, quickly replacing, often tossing out altogether.
That is our tendency {or mine at least}. I’m learning, though, that that tendency is not always how God prefers to work. Yes, God is doing a new thing, but that doesn’t necessarily mean God starts from scratch. God tends to see potential rather than a lost cause. And so, more often than not, God takes what is scattered and broken and chooses to repair rather than replace. Chooses to redeem rather than reject. Chooses to renew rather than discard.
As Psalm 147:2-3 reminds us,
God is the one who rebuilds…who regathers [what is] scattered…[God] heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
Of course good work like this takes time. Lifetimes, even. But time and time again, this is the arc of the story. God’s story. God mends. God heals. God restores. God redeems. The end is not broken. Instead, in the hands of God, what is broken is transformed.
This is certainly good news, especially when the jagged edges of brokenness feel up close and personal. But here’s the thing: it is not only good news for us to receive and hold onto. It is also good news {and good work} we get to extend and participate in.
In his book, Surprised by Hope, N.T. Wright shares,
“…people who believe in the resurrection, in God making a whole new world in which everything will be set right at last, are unstoppably motivated to work for that new world in the present.”
Wright continues:
“What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself—[these things] will last into God’s future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether. They are part of what we may call building for God’s kingdom.”
What Wright reminds us of is this: God’s good work in the world—the repair and transformation of it—is happening in the here and now. It might not yet be fully realized, and we might wish we could accelerate the process, but it is happening in real time. And while this good work ultimately belongs to God, God invites us to step into the story.
As Wright points out, it can look lots of different ways. Big or small. Quiet or loud. Seen or unseen. Truly, our participation matters. We are “repairers of the breech {Isaiah 58}.”
On the days I grow discouraged, in the moments when hope feels like far too long a story, I sometimes find myself wondering if the repair is worth it. I find myself wishing God would just go ahead and start from scratch. Surely it would be easier that way.
But then I remember a truth I first learned from Brad: Just because something is broken doesn’t mean you throw it away.
I think of those families and their heirlooms on the Repair Shop—all the stories they hold and represent. And that’s when passages like Isaiah 43:1 come to mind:
But now thus says the Lord,
he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name; you are mine.
Each of us and all of us belong to God. We are too beloved to let go of. In the same way a family isn’t going to toss out a beloved heirloom, but will instead seek its repair and restoration, God won’t give up on us. Our broken world will not be left behind; it will be and is being made new.
Today, remember the arc of the story: God repairs. God restores. God redeems. In God’s hands and through God’s love, we are never beyond repair. So may we step into this story; may we participate in this work, as together, we continue to become the people God calls and invites us to be.