On Clean Slates
This week, one of the daily "devotionals" from the online Bible study app several of us go through together included several tips for developing healthy spiritual habits like prayer and reading God's word each day. One of the tips was: "Practice the Clean Slate Policy. When you get behind, miss a day, or discover what doesn't work for you, wipe the slate clean and start again."
That simple suggestion hit home for me, since I was in need of my own reboot of a few needed habits that I have been struggling with lately. And it was a good reminder--both from a practical standpoint and also from a grace-based perspective--that sometimes we all need a new beginning, or a "do-over." Fortunately, we have a God who majors in fresh starts, as Lamentations 3:23 reminds us: "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." That's a promise of a clean slate of new mercies every morning.
My bride and I watched a movie earlier this week about a man's inherited ability to go back to a previous point in his life and live it all over again. All he had to do was go into a dark place, clench his fists, and think about the specific time where things had gone wrong, and presto, he was back in that spot with the opportunity to do things differently this time.
It was a twist on the old time travel theme that you pops up every now and then in movies. In some ways, it reminded me of the Bill Murray classic, Groundhog Day, except in this case the person wasn't "stuck" on a single day. He actually had the power himself to go back and live his life all over again, on purpose. There were plenty of good life lessons in both movies I think. And though we certainly can't change what happened in our past, we can surely learn from it and prevent making the same mistakes the next time around.
There's another movie with a similar theme, released a year after Groundhog Day, called, of all things, Clean Slate. Dana Carvey starred as a private detective who suffers a head injury that leaves him with a rare form of amnesia and causes him to forget anything that happened to him the previous day. So each day, when he wakes up, he listens to a cassette tape that reminds him of who he is and why he is there. (Not unlike yet another movie from a decade later, 50 First Dates.) In this case, Carvey's character is the key witness in a murder trial, and with the amnesia he isn't sure who to trust, or even if he knows them at all. And, as they say, comedy ensues.
More than anything, it is all about learning to live each day with a "clean slate," while being reminded of who you are to begin with. There are some good lessons sometimes in such fictional stories, as there are in Scripture, about "forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead." (Phil. 3:13) We all have to learn how to leave the past behind and press on to what God has in store for us in the future.
So, how does this all apply to your life this week? Well, if you have been struggling to maintain your own healthy habits, whether that be praying, reading the Bible, or even diet or exercise or money management, then it is maybe time to just wipe the slate clean and start over. No reason being paralyzed by regret when you can move forward to what you need to do. On the other hand, perhaps you have made some bad choices, that have come with inevitable consequences. The best thing you can do is repent, confess your sins (to the Lord, and to anyone you might have offended) and tap into those mercies that are new every morning..
That's the good news about the clean slate that the Lord offers us. Each day offers us another chance to live the life He called us to live, to be the person He called us to be. Forget yesterday, and remind yourself today of who you are in Christ, and who Christ is in you.
I am grateful for all the Lord has done in us, and through us, in the days that are behind us, but I am even more grateful to know that our best days are in front of us. I pray that you and your family have a blessed Thanksgiving week, and I do hope to see you this Sunday.
--Pastor Ken
