Heavenly Botox! (09.12.05--Heavenly Citizens!--2 ...  PRO

Heavenly Botox! (09.12.05--Heavenly Citizens!--2 Cor. 5:17)

Make-overs! We are a people obsessed with them these days. We restore our cars, pump botox into our chins and eyelids, remodel our homes at a record pace and are transfixed by the various shows on television whose story lines are founded on make-overs.

What is this fascination with being made-over? Some psychologists have suggested that it has everything to do with a deep-seated discontent that rules our lives these days. We grapple with the aging process that slowly but surely is claiming our youth. Where once we kept a car until it had 150,000 miles, more and more Americans are trading in the old before it even becomes “old.” We are a people obsessed with reclaiming youth and newness. We long to be a Phoenix rising from the ashes of what was, restored to a new promise of what could be. After all of this effort, can we say that we are getting there? Will the “rebuilding” process necessary to this make-over finally find us content?

A property owner once found a buyer for a warehouse property that had been difficult to sell. As he showed a prospective buyer the property, the owner took pains to say that he would replace the broken windows, bring in a crew to correct any structural damage, and clean out the garbage.

“Forget about the repairs,” the buyer said. “When I buy this place, I’m going to build something completely different. I don’t want the building; I want the site.” (Ian L. Wilson)

Compared with the renovation God has in mind, our efforts to improve our own lives are as trivial as sweeping a warehouse slated for the wrecking ball. When we become God’s, the old life is over (2 Cor. 5:17). He makes all things new. All he wants is the site and the permission to build.

Tighter chins, firmer stomachs and buttocks don’t reflect the...