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God provides an opportunity for a new beginning - not just once, but countless times after that initial start.
by Cecil Maranville
ou're running late for work and the car breaks
down on the freeway. Later, on the job, you make a costly error.
That evening you burn dinner. Just as you are squelching the screaming
smoke detector, the doorbell rings. It's your neighbor. Your cat
went into his kitchen through the dog door and ate his pet bird.
This is the kind of day you'd like to start over.
Some things, like a written letter or a computer-generated document, are easy to cancel and start over. If only everything in life were as simple to fix as tearing up a sheet of paper or tapping the delete key on a keyboard, then starting over.
Everyone sooner or later wistfully considers just such a fantasy, of being able to go back to square one, of taking back the careless, hurtful words spoken too quickly.
Think for a moment about the big mistakes: A person drinks too much, gets behind the wheel of a car and causes a fatal accident; someone fails to exercise self-control, and a pregnancy results. The human journey is marred by such faulty judgments and their painful consequences.
Think further about Christians and their all-too-human errors. More than just wanting to avoid the pain of sin, a Christian is oriented to honor God, his Father, and enrich the lives of other people. The Bible describes a Christian as sober, or serious-minded and conscientious-or we could say conscience-driven. He knows his life should be a guiding light for everyone to see.
A serious mistake, a sin, can become a manifold source of discouragement to the Christian, with painfully familiar consequences: a sense of disappointing God, an awareness of failure to meet responsibility toward other people.
Christians need the chance to start over. But does that statement sound a little strange? Aren't Christians people who have already turned away from the mistakes common to all mankind?
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