Repair and repentance

I love fixing things. I just fixed two keys on my phone, by scrubbing the contacts out with acetone on a toothpick. Since last night, I've also been trying to fix the WiFi on my PDA, by installing a software upgrade and running the battery out. On Saturday, I was repairing some of our furniture. There is a joy when something that once was broken is working again. And especially when it is working better than when it was new, e.g., because I can use a better glue (Titebond II) than what was probably used at the furniture factory.

This is a faint image of the joy of our Shepherd when he brings us back after we have strayed and not only restores us to the grace we had before the Fall, but raises us to something higher. The disanalogy is that all too often the stuff I fix is stuff that I broke (see the "Update" in the link), or that wasn't made right in the first place, while the creatures that God fixes are ones that he made right, but they freely broke themselves, or were broken by others that freely broke themselves. I am glad my possessions don't freely break. I'd be mad at them.