Even if the world needs a little fixing up, God can tell it has good bones

We took our daughters and our exchange student, Aiym, to the Walla Walla area a couple of weeks ago, on a cold and rainy Saturday.

Our first stop was the family farm in Milton-Freewater. By the time we arrived, Isla was in tears, having learned that there were no animals there — only apple trees, and those were picked clean. Ziggy, who was initially jubilant about being free of the car seat, soon joined the tearful chorus when she fell on the driveway’s rough concrete. And in the midst of all this crying, I realized I’d forgotten the keys to the farmhouse.

So much for giving everyone the tour.

No one had brought weather-appropriate clothing, so we all shivered in our thin sweaters as we made a quick circuit of the house and garden. My husband tried to soothe the children, while I fretted about the state of the roof. “What’s happened to this place?” I wondered.

With only the very elderly to tend to it, the once-pristine home that my grandfather had built was falling into disrepair. The orchard he’d cleared by hand was still in good shape (it’s still a working farm), but the vibrant flower beds needed tending and the trees in the garden needed some TLC. And hidden in the basement, I suspected, a vibrant colony of mold and mildew was plotting an insurgency.

As I looked around, I worried what Aiym would think. I’d told her what this place meant to me, but now that we were there, it felt shabby and neglected. What she said next took me by surprise.

“I want to live here,” she said.

“Oh really?” I said, disbelieving. “I mean, it needs so much fixing up … the siding, the roof … I swear, it was so tidy when I was growing up.”

But Aiym just wandered off to get a better look. She wasn’t interested in my excuses or my upside-down sales pitch. She liked it there on the farm. Despite the freezing rain, the peeling paint, the creeping shabbiness, she could still see the beauty there.

And it’s true, the place has good bones. There is still a happy, proud spirit about the farmhouse that time has not erased. Even Aiym, who hails from the other side of the planet, could tell.

I wonder if that’s how God feels about us — and why he would send his Son to us to bring us back to wholeness and health — because he can tell that this world has good bones. There is beauty here worth preserving. In fact, there is something so beloved about this place and the people in it that God wants to live here, with us.

This Advent, we will wait with bated breath to hear God affirm this truth once again: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

I hope you will join us in this season of joyful, hopeful anticipation, which began Dec. 3 and culminates with Christmas Eve, when we proclaim the arrival of the incarnate Word, the birth of the infant Christ. Together, we’ll celebrate the goodness of God, who can see what we so often cannot see. Who affirms us and loves us, despite our flaws, our disrepair, even the parts of us prone to decay.

How fortunate we are to be so loved. This Advent, let’s try our best to return the favor.

This story was originally published December 16, 2017 at 1:01 PM with the headline "Even if the world needs a little fixing up, God can tell it has good bones."