Restoration Project

Once useful, shiny and new...

Used to make brilliant beautiful music...

Stored away...

Un-thought of for a time...

Remembered, now...

But the life is gone...

The music is silent...

All things can be made new. 

Worn out things,

Broken things,

Even things carelessly tossed about...

With the right care and attention-

These things can be restored.

At the moment that is what I am working on.

An old sax.  It was probably new in the late sixties.

A dear friend passed away and this was left behind to be restored. 

Someday, she too will be restored...

 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

1 Thessalonians 4:16

Even now she is worshiping Jesus in a way I can't even imagine.

So, back to this whole restoration thought.

First, there is heat...



 This loosens up the old pads and gunk.  The heat reminds me of the fifth verse of an old hymn: 

"When thro' fiery Trials thy Pathway shalt lie,
My Grace, all-sufficient, shall be thy Supply;
The flame shall not hurt thee, I only design
Thy Dross to consume, and thy Gold to refine."

Restoration requires heat.

But heat brings purity.

In this instance I wouldn't be able to put a new pad in place with out first taking the old

one out and that requires heat.

And next comes... more heat.  This is the shellac used to level in a new pad. Having a good base of shellac will allow me to shift the pad somewhat later on so that there are no leaks.  Leaks mean squeaks and we don't want those.

So right now, everything is apart. 

The whole thing looks like just...  a whole bunch of pieces.

There is really a sax there,

essentially, there is still music there too.

It makes me think of the times when God has had to tear me down to the essentials.  So I can see the trees from the forest.  So I can find a deeper relationship with Him.  Sometimes the heat to remove the dross is painful.  Giving up wrong thinking or doing... that has been going on for a lifetime, can be painful.  Going through a time of healing is not always instantaneous. 

So, that's what I'm in the middle of right now.  Restoration...