making old things new

I've gotten into the habit of taking walks around the neighborhoods surrounding me, in the evenings when it's bearable outside. I live in an apartment in the old part of Yuma, and it's a sort of run-down dusty area. I like it though. There are some beautiful old houses, and the downtown with its abandoned side streets and adobe buildings with wide porches makes me feel like I've walked into a different world. This is the Yuma that was left behind when the shiny new mall, Yuma Palms, was built just a few miles south. The mall, with its flashy movie theater and big department stores and well-lit streets, is the place to be on a weekend. Meanwhile, old downtown Yuma houses lawyer's offices and some struggling antiques stores, two bars, a casino, a newly restored old theater and a newly built one, and a few restaurants.
You know why I like it? I get such a sense of excitement, like something beautiful is simmering right below the surface- the possibility of restoration and vitality that still lives deep within the empty broken windows and the boarded up side streets. I know it's there, because I pass La Casa Gutierrez, a beautiful old home that now houses a fantastic Mexican restaurant. The windows are trimmed with blue and red tile, a fountain bubbles in the front yard, and the walls covered with pictures of Yuma's past citizens, and the place is always full at lunch. And the downtown is not nearly as deserted as it first seems- go inside a seemingly deserted cafe, and there's people there, the students from the cosmetology school on their lunch break, a mother and son just done with karate lessons, the inevitable lawyers, old ladies from Canada.
It's the feeling I get every time I'm in a shabby old lived-in place. Philadelphia, the sketchy part of Normaltown in Athens, South Tucson. There is just something about these places.
And it got me thinking about restoration. I love the feeling of taking something that has history, that has felt the fingerprints and feet of generations and is decidely worse for wear, and restoring it to something beautiful. Not restoring it to how it was before, with crazy huge Victorian furniture, but making the old relevant and functional and attractive in today's world. There's something holy about that.
I don't think Holy is too strong a word for it. If you think about it, restoration is what we are called to, more than anything else. We start out in God's image, and life twists and distorts and dirties that image until it is barely recognizable. But God sees through the bad paint and cracked tile and unkempt yard of this house that is our lives- He sees the beauty underneath, what we are supposed to be, called to be. And he restores us. It brings to mind the passage in Ezekiel- 16:6- where the prophet describes Israel as an abandoned child, left to die in her blood and filth. And God sees her and speaks that earth-shattering word: LIVE!
Isn't that what He's done for all of us?
On a smaller scale, it's what he's called us to do. To restore what is broken and run-down and dirty and worn out. To bring hope and revival and new life.
I don't think that this restoration mission is a narrow one. It should touch and influence every facet of our lives. Obviously, it applies to restoring and building up the broken and run-down people around us, but there's more than that. I believe that we are called to bring restoration to what is old, to find what is good and beautiful and relevant in the things that have been cast off. To reinvigorate and restore old neighborhoods, re-discover cast off clothes and re-invent them, take in stray animals. All according to the gifts God has given us.
This applies to the church as well. Instead of creating a new Christianity which reinforces American lifestyle values and emulates corporations and celebrities, let's look for relevant ideas from our roots. Let's pull out those ideas of community, of simplicity, of hard work, that motivated Christians ages ago. Our job is to make the church relevant, not by creating something new, but by restoring what has been lost and making it functional and meaningful for today.

These are the ideas that came to me as I walked- maybe it's the result of my brain trying to escape from the agonies of studying commercial paper and contracts. Let me know what you think.