Note: On Tuesdays and some Sundays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
This portrait is of my great-grandmother Abigail Leane Rigney, taken by one of my great-aunts around 1910. (And yes, that’s me taking the picture in the background, sorry.) The family wasn’t well to do by any means, but photos of Abbie, my great-grandfather, 
and my grandfather were made into those trendy-in-the-day raised portraits with convex glass frames.
A family member found all three portraits in a sheep shed in the 1970s. That’s right, a sheep shed. They were unprotected from the sheep and the elements. No one knows how they got there or when. Debbie Abbie’s portrait fared the worst; it was torn in two places, and was spotted with mold and who knows what else. So, when the portraits came into my possession in the late 1980s, I had her professionally restored to the condition you see here. It’s not exactly like the original, but it’s a big improvement from the way it looked before restoration, and I’m betting that it’ll hold up another thirty years or more.
Spiritual restoration works that way too. The peace we feel after being buffeted around by doubt and temptation and all the evil one serves up to us isn’t the same peace we felt before the troubles began. We’re richer in belief and trust, confident that the next storm will not seem quite so bad because we know He is with us through it all, whether it’s a medical crisis, death in the family, employment disappointment, or maybe just a bad day in ministry. As we grow in our dependence on the Lord, we find ourselves restored… and closer and closer to Him.
