A friend of mine had been doing some renovation to an older home. He was tearing the old floor out of a house, and before he threw it away, he decided to call me and see if we might have any use for it. Actually, I was pretty excited about his call because I’m always looking for old wood for making birdhouses. He said, "I want you to know - it's pretty ugly. But it's good solid maple wood, it will just take some work."

Now I’ve got piles and bucketful’s of that wood - and my friend was right, it's pretty ugly. Those old floorboards have several coats of paint of them . . . they're dirty . . . some are gouged, they're kind of beat up. It looked to me like it might only be good for firewood. But my friend pointed out that the wood was an inch thick - and he assured me that I could sand off all the damage and still have plenty of wood left.

As I rummaged through the wood, trying to find a suitable piece for building, I soon found that the wood was just too much work to get the old paint and varnish off. So I called my friend for help. He took a piece home and brought it back a few days later. I was amazed. He took that ugly old piece of flooring and made it look new again. There was no trace of the damage . . . it was smooth, beautifully grained, and like new. The restoration was amazing!

From my view, that wood was ready for the fireplace - until the skilled carpenter worked on it. The ugly was gone and it was like new. It took a master carpenter to work such a miracle.

It made me think about what the Master Carpenter from Nazareth can do for us - people like you and me. We're all damaged wood, with layers of dirt and scarring from years of use. But one who has mastered the art of restoration can restore our damaged wood.

In the second epistle to the Corinthians, (5:17), the apostle Paul writes, "If man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." From the moment you put your life in the hands of Jesus, and take upon the name of the Master Restorer, He begins to repair and transform the damage that's been done by years of transgression. We all carry the damage done from our sinning . . . from mistreatment . . . from bad choices . . . maybe from pride or anger. Yet the Master Restorer can refurbish those who are tired of the guilt, tired of the pain, tired of the burden.

The prophet Isaiah, in chapter 61, messianically describes the total restoring work He came to do. He said, (paraphrased), The Lord has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release from darkness the prisoners, . . . to comfort all who mourn, . . . and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of heaviness, . . . that they might be called trees of righteous, the planting of the Lord. (Isaiah 61:1-3).

We have in Christ, a Savior who wants to turn our captivity into freedom . . . our grieving into comfort . . . the mourning of our life into gladness . . . and our layers of paint, varnish and stain into beautiful wood again, even new trees planted by Him. There is no therapist on earth that can do that . . . no gardener . . . no self-improvement program . . . and no general contractor. There is only one title, one name, on heaven or on earth (Moses 6:52) that can restore the damage of our lives - only Christ can.

The irony of this story comes from the belief we all have as Christians, that on one dark day, on an old piece of wood, he allowed His body to be hung on a tree, (I Peter 2:24). He has broken the hold of sin forever - by atoning for it - for all man, if we but trust and follow Him. So the future doesn't have to be more of the past. We have a Master Carpenter who is waiting to begin a restoring miracle today.

Christ told the ancient inhabitants of the Americas to "marvel not . . . that old things can pass away, and that all things can become new." (Italics added for application purposes) We all have some type of restoration that needs to be done in our lives, some old wood that needs to be restored. Much like my friend who was able to take an old piece of floor board and make it new, we too need to put our lives in the hands of the Master Carpenter, who can restore all things, and who can make old things new again.