Clean Slates
“…As far as the east
is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” Psalm 103:12
In a Dennis the
Menace cartoon, Dennis' wrongdoing, for which he is being punished, is made
abundantly clear. You might say, "The handwriting is on the wall." With the evidence of
his misdeed, spent Crayolas, scattered on the floor behind him, Dennis sits in
the corner staring at the once pristine walls which are now decorated with his
artwork""a dinosaur, a house, a cowboy, the sky with sun and clouds.
Evidently, mom didn't much appreciate his drawing skills, so there he sits in
his rocking chair snuggling his Teddy Bear, alone with his thoughts. Hank
Ketcham allows us to overhear what he is thinking: "Boy, I wish life came
with an eraser!"
Indeed! Don't we all? I suspect there are times in each of our lives when we, too, wish life came with an eraser, when we would relish the opportunity to turn back the clock to a time just before our latest mistake, so that we could have another go at it, another opportunity to make a better choice. Oh, if life would just offer us an eraser capable of doing that, capable of giving us a new and fresh start, free of our past sins""an eraser that could turn back the clock to a time before our mistakes had left us shaking our heads and wondering, "How could I have done that?"
That universal desire for life's eraser is what makes 2 Corinthians 5 such a loved chapter. Paul writes to the church at Corinth to say that in Christ we are recreated, made new, born again. If anyone is in Christ there is a new creation, everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!
Is this not what David prayed for in that famous 51st Psalm, his repentance following his adultery with Bathsheba? The psalm is replete with David's pleadings for forgiveness. "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love . . . wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin . . . purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean, wash me and I shall be whiter than snow."
Yes, he prayed out of a deep sense of shame and sorrow for personal cleansing. But he seems to have done more, praying that God would take an eraser and, in effect, turn back the hands of time by actually erasing his sin. "Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities."
He wanted nothing less than a fresh slate, to go back to a time before the transgression had occurred. "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me."
Indeed! Don't we all? I suspect there are times in each of our lives when we, too, wish life came with an eraser, when we would relish the opportunity to turn back the clock to a time just before our latest mistake, so that we could have another go at it, another opportunity to make a better choice. Oh, if life would just offer us an eraser capable of doing that, capable of giving us a new and fresh start, free of our past sins""an eraser that could turn back the clock to a time before our mistakes had left us shaking our heads and wondering, "How could I have done that?"
That universal desire for life's eraser is what makes 2 Corinthians 5 such a loved chapter. Paul writes to the church at Corinth to say that in Christ we are recreated, made new, born again. If anyone is in Christ there is a new creation, everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!
Is this not what David prayed for in that famous 51st Psalm, his repentance following his adultery with Bathsheba? The psalm is replete with David's pleadings for forgiveness. "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love . . . wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin . . . purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean, wash me and I shall be whiter than snow."
Yes, he prayed out of a deep sense of shame and sorrow for personal cleansing. But he seems to have done more, praying that God would take an eraser and, in effect, turn back the hands of time by actually erasing his sin. "Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities."
He wanted nothing less than a fresh slate, to go back to a time before the transgression had occurred. "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me."
When
we hand our lives over to Him, He will make a clean slate of our hearts and
past. As the song says, “Oh Precious is
the flow…that makes me white as snow.”
Terry
Risser
Consider reading the Word today:
Copyright 2014- Terry Risser
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