A Blank Page

Do you ever feel like you are just staring at a blank page? Writers might know what I am talking about - a page that is supposed to have a ton of writing on it but has nothing. Not the page of someone with writer’s block, but a page ready for the first word of your next novel. A page ready for the start of a new chapter.

I was taunted by a blank page one night in seminary when I accidently deleted a ten page paper due the next day. For some reason I was unable to recover it, though looking back I am glad I did not recover a mediocre paper. The one written in the haste of midnight until the hours of daybreak was one of my best. The blank page gave me that proverbial ‘clean slate’ to begin work once again.

Sometimes a blank slate is exactly what we need - even if it brings up thoughts about Noah and the flood story in Genesis. God creating a blank slate for us to start over again.

But is this not what our faith is all about? We have a God so willing, so loving, so merciful that we are given a blank slate over and over again. We sin, we repent, we are forgiven. We sin, we do not always realize, and yet we are forgiven. God wipes our slate clean just as God wipes our tears from our eyes and lovingly (sometimes forcefully) sends us on with the knowledge we have another shot.

God invites us into that type of ministry as well. The church is invited to be ministers of blank slates - a community that wipes away all of the awful crud from the past so that we are able to live into a brighter and more abundant tomorrow. All this is accomplished by the work we do today. Even when I feel the most frustrated, the most defeated, I remember that God is willing to wipe my slate clean for me and give me another chance. God will - and does that for you. God gives you a new start, a new chapter, a chance to set the tone and narrative of your own story as you live to be the person so beautifully and carefully created by God.

Yours in Christ,
Pastor Jason