By David Faust
My wedding ring fit perfectly when Candy and I got married in 1975, but in recent years my finger swelled a bit and the ring became too tight. I went to a jeweler and asked him to resize my ring. A week later I picked it up and paid a modest fee. I asked the jeweler, “Do you mind telling me how you did this?”
He answered with a question: “Do you really want to know?”
I nodded, and he explained the process. “First,” the jeweler explained, “I cut your ring in half.”
I gulped. That wedding ring is one of my most valuable earthly possessions!
The jeweler continued, “Then I added some gold, soldered the whole thing back together, and polished it.”
I said, “But when I look at the finished product, I can’t see that you did anything at all.”
The jeweler shrugged and said, “If you could tell what I did by looking at the ring, that would mean I didn’t do a very good job.”
NEW THINGS
As another new year begins, it’s good to remember that the Lord is the Master Craftsman. He’s an expert at making things new. He knows how to take our lives apart and put them back together again.
In biblical times there were different Greek words for new. Neos meant new in terms of time—recent or young. A different word, kainos, meant new in quality or form—fresh or different. For example, the old way of communicating was to place a letter in an envelope and drop it into a mailbox. When we started using email, it was kainos—a whole new kind of mail—a new way to communicate.
Kainos (new in quality, not just in time) is the word used in 2 Corinthians 5:17, which says God makes us new creations in Christ. Kainos is the word used for new in the new covenant Jesus died to establish (Hebrews 8:13), the new song that surrounds the throne of God (Revelation 5:9), and the new heaven and new earth awaiting God’s people (Revelation 21:1).
After Jesus died, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus took his body down from the cross and placed it in “a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid” (John 19:41). The word for Jesus’ “new” tomb was kainos (new in quality or form). Jesus’ empty tomb introduced a new quality of hope to the world. His resurrection changes everything.
MOVED HEARTS
In Ezra 1, it twice says God moved someone’s heart to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. First, “The Lord moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm” (Ezra 1:1). Later, it was the Jewish leaders—“everyone whose heart God had moved—prepared to go up and build the house of the Lord in Jerusalem” (v. 5). To get something new done, the Master Craftsman stirred ideas not only in the minds of his covenant people, but even in the mind of a pagan ruler.
Sometimes the process looks mysterious to us, but the Lord is in the transformation business. Like a master jeweler, he can take the gold rings of our lives, cut them apart, and make them more beautiful, fitting, and useful than ever before. What is he stirring in your heart as another new year begins?
Personal Challenge: Write a prayer expressing your commitment to the Lord as you enter the new year ahead.
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This article is adapted from a chapter written by David Faust in The Character of Christ (College Press, 2018).
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