Restored

I have been reading the Old Testament over the last few months, and one topic that keeps coming back is restoration. The people of Israel constantly disobey God, but each time they repent the Lord restores them. Israel’s greatest kings, like David and Josiah, are not distinguished by perfection – they all failed and sinned at some point in their lives. They are called righteous because they humbled themselves before God and asked Him to restore them and then changed their ways. For my cousin Josué, restoration came in his 11^th hour, and it is only now, after more than two weeks of reflecting on those day’s events, that I can start to comprehend what a miracle God performed that day.

My cousin Josué was born with hemophilia, a disorder that prevents blood from clotting. Growing up, any small bump or scrape had the potential to be fatal. Dealing with the disease made him very mature for his age. By the age of 13 he had already committed his life to the Lord, had been baptized, and was involved in the church where my uncle pastored, teaching pre-school children about God. When he my uncle and aunt separated, Josué and my aunt moved from Peru to New York. It was sometime later, when he was in his 20’s, that they discovered he had AIDS. The plasma and blood transfusions that had kept him alive during his youth had also infected him with HIV. It was during that time that he decided he did not want to have anything to do with God.

Over the years, he started to reconnect with our extended family in Peru, and I believe that it was thanks to those encounters that the Lord started to soften his heart. When his liver and spleen started to fail a month ago, my uncle was able to visit him in New York. It was during the second visit, late at night on Sunday 22^nd of October, that my uncle was able to lead Josué back to the Lord. Six hours later he entered into a coma, and Monday morning he died and went to be with the Lord.

We as a family had been praying for restoration in his life. We wanted him to be healed of AIDS and of hemophilia, but most of all to be restored in his relationship with Christ. Both things happened, even though the first was not in the way that we as humans wanted it to happen! In his last few hours of life, through the love of my uncle, aunt, and family, and by the grace of God, he was restored. My uncle told Josué at one point that the Lord had shown him two possible outcomes for his situation. Either Josué would be completely healed and become a living testament of the power of God, or he would be speaking face to face with his Savior. Both outcomes depended on one thing though, that Josué give his life back to Christ. That is truly a miracle, that Christ’s love reached past all of the tragedies Josué experienced in this life, past the disappointment and anger he had felt towards God. Josué saw that in Jesus there was something greater, something he maybe could not understand, but something that he longed for. As I write this, he is restored, free of disease, free of the burdens of this world, and talking to God face to face. Hallelujah!

- For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. – (John 3:16)

- For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory." "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" – (1 Corinthians 15:53-55)