Today I walked through the shell of something that was once great. Stacey’s Bookstore on Market Street shut its doors last month, and I found myself walking through its doors today just to peek at the liquidation. Three floors of books and magazines reduced to old computers, worn bookshelves, and odds and ends strewn about in containers. “No exchanges, no returns, no refunds.” A once stately establishment back to where it started.
Marcia and I were listening to a talk by Tim Keller entitled “Dwelling in the Gospel,” and he pared down the gospel (not the presentation or message, but the gospel, “good news” itself) down to three words: manger, cross, crown. Manger, that God came incarnate in the God-man Jesus Christ. Cross, that Jesus paid the substitutionary death for the sake of our lostness and brokenness. Crown, that He’s coming back again to restore everything back to what it was all intended to be.
So many things die. Look around, you see myriads of deeply entrenched staples falling into shambles. A great bookstore, a pillar of the community, powerful cities, rock-solid corporations, you name it, we’ve seen them fall. Yet in our deepest brokenness, be it personal, communal, societal, organizational, emotional, or spiritual, the gospel tells a story that the broken pieces can again be made whole in Christ.
[written sitting on a bench on the waterfront]
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He brings life out of death. Such is His kingdom…