"Jesus is in the business of this reclaiming us and restoring us into beautiful versions of ourselves. Ortberg uses the analogy of a mechanic restoring an old motorcycle, believing that the old rusted bike has its best years ahead of it:
My friend, Jeff, started a blog where he writes about buying and restoring old motorcycles. I’ve never seen Jeff as animated as when thumbs through his iPhone and finds pictures of the last old bike he rescued from rust and neglect. His idea of a good afternoon is to drive to an old barn in some forgotten part of Ohio and to sift through mountains of defunct bikes. He’ll find a handful of motorcycles with promise and negotiate with the owner until man is willing to part with his treasures. Jeff, then, spends months nursing the old bikes to their former glory, pouring time, money, and parts into his projects. Once he’s finished, Jeff photographs his prizes, and sells them. Then its back to the junk heap to do it again, simply out of his love for motorcycles.
This is, I think, why God is so committed to our change. It’s easy for us to get frustrated with God tinkering at our lives all the time. Didn’t Jesus or George Beverly Shea sing the words “Just As I Am” at a Billy Graham Crusade? If he loves us so much, why he is discontent with our current condition?
We tend to get insecure and imagine that God is critical and angry at us. Or that his love is somehow conditional, based on our ability to jump through a series of rings aflame with holy fire. The truth is that God is a bit like Jeff, or vice-versa. He loves us and recalls what we looked like before corruption and decay pocked the sheen on our lives. He is committed to changing us because he know who we really are.
We religious people, meanwhile, tend to handle each other like airport luggage handlers. This leads to the false belief that its better to lower our heads and fit in."
