What is redemption?

Sitting at a banquet for Bethany Christian Services, a Christian adoption agency, we heard the most amazing thing. We were there celebrating the one year anniversary of the adoption of our son. After 4 long years of infertility and the long road leading to adoption, we finally had our baby boy in our arms.

"Redemption", the banquest speaker, Rich Buhler said, "Redemption is in this room tonight. Bethany Christian Services is all about Redemption. Here's a definition of the word you may not have ever heard, but is more than fitting for what we celebrate tonight. "

"Redemption means...taking that which never should've happened and making it always planned."

We had to stop an marinate in that one...taking that which never should've happened...and making it ALWAYS PLANNED.

What shouldn't have happened...a single, teenage girl, having sex for possibly the first time, gets pregnant.....Always planned..our answered prayer...our baby boy in our arms.

Therein lies the mystery of God...our minds can hardly wrap ourselves around it...yet somehow in our souls it rings true...He is taking what shouldn't have happened and turning it into that which was always planned. It's what He's been up to since the fall of man.

Shouldn't have happened...Adam and Eve and that blasted tree and piece of fruit
Always planned....Christ comes in the form of a baby, walks this earth clothed in flesh, then dies a gruesome criminal's death...then is raised from the dead on the third day...for me, for you...for the whole world.

God is in the redemption business. Ann Voskamp says, "He is transfiguring all things back to glory...making the ugly...beautiful."

My life is this...taking things that never should've been and making them...always planned...redeemed. Taking that which is ugly and transfiguring it to glory...to the beautiful. It hurts a lot...and some days seem like there is no hope for all the ugliness to become a thing of beauty...that He really is taking all my failures, misfortunes, struggles, sins...and redeeming them.

But that's exactly what He is doing.

And like Job, though not nearly as wounded and stripped as he was, I don't know much, and I wasn't there when He formed the stars and put the planets in their rotation.

But if there's one thing Ido know...it is this

I KNOW MY REDEEMER LIVES!