something old or something new?

I've been thinking a lot lately about... well... this world and the way it is compared to the way God intended it. I've been thinking about miracles. The miracle of salvation, miraculous healings, the miracle of addiction recovery or a restored relationship... things like that. And I wonder if we view miracles wrongly. Is a miracle really an invasion of something other-worldly? Or is it God's way of showing us how this world is supposed to be?

In my visits to Amsterdam, I've gone on some prayer walks through the Red Light District. And in the midst of all the depravity and sin, all I can think is "this isn't how it's supposed to be." The drug addicts, drug dealers, and prostitutes weren't created to be drug addicts, drug dealers and prostitutes. They were created to be so much more. God didn't create that area of Amsterdam so that it could become the Red Light District. I'm certain that his original intent for that place was much higher.

So which is really more unusual? The "miracle" that restores a place or person, or the sin that covers over and destroys? Maybe we've gotten so used to the way the world is, that "how it's supposed to be" seems out of place.

This poem is the result of all that contemplation.

The radical shifting of shapes and things.
A new picture framed in my window pane.
Things of old being made anew.
The face in the mirror looking back at you
looks different than the time before.
Is it something new beginning to unfold?
Or something existing before time untold?
A new creation - like a baby born?
Or a stretched rubber band, returned to it's original form?
What do I see looking back at me?
A new way that things are?
Or a way that things have been,
and were always meant to be?