A Clean Slate, A Fresh Start, A Life Without Pain!

When I was first introduced to the plan of salvation as a very young child, the teacher in my Sunday School used a blackboard to illustrate it. She said that our life was like that blackboard , free of marks when we were born, and as we lived, we got marks on our life, which she drew marks with chalk to depict. She told us that what Christ did on Calvary wiped all those marks away and give us a clean board (life) once again. A simple illustration, and one that I never forgot.

As I grew older, I did not always attend Sunday School or church, but I never forgot that illustration and made a conscious choice not to have many marks on my board. When I did get those marks, I would live in such regret – somehow I felt that I had failed God and myself, and would forget the remedy that the teacher told me about, that the work on Calvary washed away those marks.

I still have a tendency to live in regret with those marks. I had set a personal goal which I failed to meet – I mourned the loss of not meeting that goal and did some things that took me even farther away from it. This time I did remember that finished work however, and even with the failure began to take steps to get back on the road to meeting that goal – delayed is not denied!

Every day I am reminded of how this year I am living such a different life than the last couple of years. A couple of weeks ago I went to the doctor for a three month check-up on my knee surgery. They took x-rays and I was amazed at how much the new knee looked like my other knee. To me, it was a miracle! For the last x-ray I had viewed of both knees showed such a different story. The last x-ray showed one healthy knee and another very affected and damaged knee. The surgery took out all that affected part and replaced it with a knee that not only functions like my other knee, it looks just like it! This year I am walking without pain – I have the opportunity to increase my capacity and truly walk in the newness of life.

1 Corinthians 1:29-31 (MSG) says:

26-31Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families… That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.”

Our lives have ups and downs – sometimes we don’t make our goals, sometimes we have marks on our boards – but thanks be unto God – He provided a plan of redemption through Christ Jesus and gave us more than that a clean slate, a fresh start – we can live without pain!

God Bless You,
Maria