Welcome to My New Blog

Beginning this week I will be posting A Norvell Note to this blog. I hope you will visit, read, share your thoughts, and if you see something worthwhile, share it with others. Obviously, this is a new plan for me so it will change and evolve as I learn the way it works. Here is this week’ A Norvell Note.

Vol. 15 No. 44 | November 12, 2012

There is a time to tear and a time to mend.

Sometimes the fences around our property need to be torn down in order to build or improve relations with our neighbors; sometimes the fences around our property need to be mended in order to build or improve relations with our neighbors.

There are times when walls of division need to be torn down so that divisions in relationships can be mended.

There is considerable talk in our nation of the need for the barriers that separate us politically to be torn down so that meaningful change can occur that will mend some of the ills that exist.

In families, churches, businesses, education systems, and other organizations, generational differences have to be torn down to create a spirit of unity and cooperation can emerge for the good of the whole.

Many of our communities have boundaries – some visible and some invisible – that isolate, insulate, and protect us in the security of our neighborhoods from the undesirables. Maybe it is time some of these boundaries are torn down so that the dysfunction in our communities can be mended.

Occasionally a wall may form between husbands and wives due to hurts, disappointments, or unmet expectations that are not confronted and dealt with. Those walls must be torn down or the relationship may be permanently damaged.

Parents may sense similar walls being built between them and their children as a result of poor and ineffective communication. Those walls must be destroyed in order to keep the relationship growing and healthy.

There was a time when mankind was separated from God because of our sin. We needed a way to tear down the curtain that kept us from Him. We tried but we could do nothing to make it possible. On the cross Jesus tore the curtain in two and forever mended our brokenness.

It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last. (Luke 23:44-46, NIV1984)

There was a time when we were powerless to do anything to repair the damage our sins had done to our relationship with God. By dying for us the relationship has been mended.

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.(Romans 5:6-8, NIV)

There was a time when we were dead because of our sins. We tried to earn our way back into God’s good graces. We failed. There was nothing we could do to bring us back close to Him. The great love of the One who is rich in mercy made us alive and mended us and saved us.

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. (Ephesians 2:1-5, NIV)

There is a time to tear and a time to mend. Thanks be to God that He has seen fit to tear away all the barriers that keep us separated from Him and has mended our helpless condition.

Tom

© Copyright 2012 Tom Norvell. All rights reserved.