A clean white board... That is the Grace of God!

Recently in the house of many little children that I live in, we have a lot of melt downs. We have a lot of 'I never' and 'She Always'. We also have had some 9 year old attitudes that are far from lovely! I sat down with one of those little attitudes the other night and we talked about how so often she throws a fit or gets so upset about doing something, and then once there realizes it was just what she wanted to do. We talked about how whatever that even was, wouldn't have been even better if we went into it without kicking and screaming. Without having to apologize to someone afterwards for how we behaved before. But I think the best part of that conversation, was the 'white board' with the 'red marker'. I was learning as I was speaking that night. I talked to her about the white board at school. And how at the end of the day, her teacher cleans it off. She said that actually someone else does. I thought about it and that was even more perfect. I said, so think about the white board and how all day long it gets marked on. Some of it great, some not so great(if someone has to sign the board or someone gets an answer wrong and wrote that on the board). I said picture all of those things in red. And how that is so bold and eventually that entire board is covered in red. But at the end of the day, someone else wipes it all off, and it is what... clean again. And that gives a new day to start all over. I told her, that is like a day for us. We are the white board. And no matter how hard we try we will get at a red mark on it. That is just the sin we often don't even know we marked ourselves with. Sometimes there will be a huge red mark in the same place every day. That is that repetitive sin that we just for the life of us cannot seem to kick. But, then Jesus came and died, and that white board is cleaned off, by Him. Not by us. And that is the grace we are given. The grace of a new day, a new clean white board. And each night we can go to bed knowing that He is going to be there to clean it off for us, but it is out job to try and not have that same red marker in the same place day after day. It is the grace of God that we get a new day, a new minute. We don't have to wait until anything to have our 'new day'. We can start it immediately, that is the grace He gave us.

Who knew I needed to hear all of that the same night!!!!