Fresh Start

Hopefully this statement will not elicit any hate mail: I miss back to school shopping! There just always seemed to be something hope-filled about the beginning of a new school year.

Pencil crayons all sharpened neatly…pencils, eraser ,pens (two blue, one red),…names neatly printed on new notebooks…clean binders free of “art work”…

Thinking back to my own school days and my own preparations as each school year approached, I remember the promise, the anticipation. that this year I was going to do it right. With each notebook that I carefully labelled with my name was a promise to myself that this year every entry would be neat, orderly…the very best.

Usually though, that extra neat plan didn’t make it past the first week! Never the plan, but often the reality, that perfect notebook would have to be next year’s goal.

An added trauma was to use a pen rather than a pencil. With a pencil, there was at least a hope of correcting mistakes neatly. Pen mistakes – no chance! Did you ever work so hard to erase a mistake that you ended up with a hole in your paper? No hiding that!

Teachers must have tired of the hole in the paper scenario as well. Some instructed that a single line should be drawn through the error – leaving your mistake on display…forever a part of the assignment.

Does that feel like a picture of your life? Mistakes clearly on display? Mistakes made worse by your own attempts to fix things…leaving you broken…damaged…rubbed raw….

Sometimes we long for a “back to school” kind of chance…a chance to start with a clean slate.

We have all been there. We are all there. In varying degrees, at various times, we all mess up…repeatedly…

Listen to the writer of Lamentations: “I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.” (3:19, 20)

Been there? That place of remembering that is only remorse…that place of wondering if we have reached the end of forgiveness…the end of new beginnings.

Don’t stop there! Don’t stay there! The writer of Lamentations continues: “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (3:21-23)

“Yet this I call to mind”… remind yourself…remind each other…there is mercy…there is compassion…because of God’s great love, the mercy does not run out!

“New every morning”…always there….

It is not about you starting a new day, a new month, a new year, and somehow determining to get it right this time. If it was about us, we would be consumed! It is about God…His mercy…His faithfulness…His great love for you!

Ruth