“It Will Not Be So in the Mended Wood”

June 7

“Adam had no idea one bite could cause all of this.”

Jackie Hill Perry’s latest Instagram photos have exposed the violence, hatred, fire, and war ravaging America right now. Her caption stung me.

Violence and hatred and fire and war wouldn’t be ravaging us if Adam hadn’t stooped to join Eve in her sin. If the Tree hadn’t been robbed. If the Serpent hadn’t wrung all truth out of God’s words.

But instead of despairing, my mind countered the sorrow of Jackie’s caption with these words from S. D. Smith’s The Green Ember:

It will not be so in the mended wood. [i]

The Green Ember is a story much like ours, about a fallen world and striving beings and goodness dashed by sin.

And like our story, there’s a future Hope that sings above every storm:

It will not always be so.

Jesus is going to mend what’s bleeding and broken.

And until he returns, we are heralds of that mended wood— people who love without prejudice and thrash against it in hope of a Savior who is renewing all things (Rev. 21:5).

. . .

[i] S. D. Smith, The Green Ember. (2014, Dec. 12: Story Warren Books)