restoration

“Be glad, people of Zion, rejoice in the Lord your God, for he has given you the autumn rains because he is faithful. He sends you abundant showers both autumn and spring rains, as before.” (Joel 2:23)

​“I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten, the great locust and the young locust, the other locusts and the locust swarm -my great army that I sent among you.” (Joel 2:25)

By: Ferdinando Turkovich

The abundance of the Lord is astounding! As my wife and I enter our first fall season as husband and wife, we have been considering what our present and future roles within our community are and will continue to be. One of those roles we both immediately recognized is to be students. For me, this is to complete the first stages of a process that I started almost 4 years ago. For her it is to begin the process.

Curiously, we found ourselves having a conversation one night that a close friend and mentor had with me. He asked me, “In 5 years, if you don’t start the process where will you be?”  My answer to him was, “Right here, complaining about not being any closer to where I want to be.”  This was the curious part; when I posed this question to my wife, she had the same answer that I did. So here we find ourselves, one of us somewhere along this well-worn path, the other at the beginning of the forest. Neither of us are really sure where the path will end, however, we do know that we are in this together. 

As we walk on this path together, it is impossible for us to neglect our current assignments. For me, it is the men of our Celebrate Recovery group here at the café.  These men continue to astound me.  They have all embraced the process of being recovered. They have also formed a brotherhood with one another, one that is built on truth and life, instead of the lies and death that we were all once subjected to. Recently one of them was hospitalized. The group decided to hold our Tuesday night meeting in his room. This is being my brother’s keeper.

For my wife, it is her students and the women that God continues to bless her to walk alongside.  As we navigate these individual assignments, we cannot help but long for and get excited at the prospects of working together one day in these very areas. It is even interwoven in our individual callings, “To love broken people where they are most broken.”

As I reflect on the last 5 years, I must stop and worship the Lord. Not just for all that He has restored, nor just for this growing hope that is beginning to sprout roots within my life, it is for the years that the locusts have destroyed that I praise Him for. It is for Him showing me that He is and always will be enough, even when I have nothing.