Laurie Beth Jones Blog

Each week I share from a BlogTalkRadio platform in a conversational format about things I am writing about, thinking about or getting ready to blog about. I shared for the last several weeks from my newest book, Jesus, Career Counselor on the topic of Restoration. It was one of those shows that I just felt was one that someone needed to hear. When I began talking about how God is in the Business of Restoration I just sensed this deep and powerful presence that God cares, for all of us. With jobs, without jobs, low money, no money, famous, disenfranchised, spiritual, or a feeling that God is silent. God wants to restore it all: Lands, Health, Position, Money, Kingdom, Goods, Comfort, Lost years, and Paths to dwell in. Let God restore you.

Here’s a quick list. Check off the ones that apply. Maybe you need to be restored.

1. You no longer hum at work.
2. You live in fear of the future.
3. You are out of energy and fatigued all the time.
4. You find yourself snapping at loved ones.
5. You’ve been swimming upstream, mentally and emotionally, but not getting anywhere.
6. You haven’t laughed in a long time.
7. Someone has broken trust with you, and now you are cautious and wary.
8. People no longer come to you for ideas or opinions.
9. Your life has lost its luster.
10.You feel like something is missing, but you are not sure what.

What are your thoughts on restoration? Furniture can be restored. Homes can be restored. Hearts can be restored. Jobs can be restored. Do you need to be restored?

Praying this week for the restoration that is yours.
Laurie Beth

Chelsea King

By Laurie Beth Jones

March 3, 2010

She was a straight A student who played the French Horn in the San Diego Youth Symphony. She was a cross country athlete who took off after school for an afternoon run last Thursday, and never returned home. As news of Chelsea Kings sudden disappearance hit the news, all of us in San Diego shuddered in recognition., remembering Amber Dubois, a fourteen year old student who walked to the school bus two years ago, and has never been seen again. She lived twenty minutes away from where Chelsea was last seen.

And then again….

Fresh images of desperate parents pleading on the news for someone to come forward with information. Volunteers posting fliers on store windows and telephone poles. Helicopters and rescue teams arriving to begin the search. Red vested teams dragging the lake, waist high in murky water. A found tennis shoe. Underwear with telling DNA. And then… a rapist and murderer too late caught…cornered in a local restaurant with mud still on his jeans. John Gardner. Registered sex offender. Freed after serving six years for child molestation. A photograph of him with an odd smile and clear staring eyes looking right at the camera– no remorse, no guilt, no hint of compassion or tell tale signs of the evil lurking within.

A candlelight vigil of thousands descending on the local church….teachers, parents and children who knew Chelsea King. Hundreds who did not. A community is in grief today. I have wept on and off for the last four days. I awoke this morning thinking I had perhaps had a nightmare of a crime too horrible to imagine. As my mind cleared I recalled with a stabbing pain to my heart that this was no dream. It was real. I cannot imagine how Chelsea’s parents feel. Or her thirteen year old brother. Their lives will never be the same.

I began to pray, for healing and restoration, for a newly empowered justice system, reinvigorated from this tragedy to enforce stricter laws, better laws, more effective or lasting incarceration.

Lord, help us all when a child falls. To somehow begin to love again, trust again, see the sunshine in a new day even as predators lurk among us.

Help us rise up and be somehow stronger through this. Let the candles lifted to the sky last night light a pathway of healing for all of us. Help Chelsea see our tears for her even as you wipe all of hers away.

Help her parents recover from this wound to the soul, and go on to live fulfilling lives. Help faith rise up in the midst of sorrow, and point us all to a brighter day.

Receive Chelsea King into your presence, Lord, where no harm can ever befall her again. Take her on a new cross country run with you today, far, far away from sorrow.

Use your healing power to turn these ashes into a garland, and our tears into diamonds of joy as you promised you will…somehow, someway, someday.

A young girl named King has come home today. Help us hear all heaven rejoicing at the beauty of her soul.

Amen and Amen.