Your Life is an Etch A Sketch

Good morning! Kids and teens—how was your first week of school? How many of you look forward to the start of the school year, not just because you "get" to return to school, but because it's a chance for a new beginning? I remember looking forward to it when I was your age. I liked starting fresh with new teachers, classrooms, and a new schedule. I was a bit ornery as a kid, so I was always grateful for those new beginnings.

Fresh starts are powerful and motivating. They remind me of playing with an Etch A Sketch or one of those magnetic drawing boards when I was a kid. You could start drawing, mess up, and then just shake it or swipe it clean, ready to begin again.

Forgiveness in our lives is like wiping the slate clean. It allows us to start over. It feels good to receive forgiveness when we mess up, and it feels just as good to forgive others. Forgiveness is at the heart of what we celebrate taking communion together.

Last week, we witnessed the baptisms of Megan, Abby, and Logan. It was a powerful reminder of new beginnings—the old is gone, the new has come. Communion serves as a reminder that Christ cleared our "Etch A Sketch" or our "magnetic drawing board" We get to begin a new day, a new week, with a fresh start.

As we prepare for communion, here are two things to reflect on:  

1.   Spiritual transformation, or simply put, change takes time. It is normal to come here week after week and sometimes feel like you're not making progress. Spiritual transformation takes time. It takes time for Christ's love to fill us as we remain in Him, it is relational, and a learning process—sometimes even a battle. In Romans, Paul says:

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Romans 7:15-20, 24-25 NIV)

2.           Remember—thanks to Christ, thanks to the cross, He forgives you. He wipes the slate clean. It is a new day, a new beginning.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!  (2 Corinthians 5:17, NIV)

We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. (Romans 6:4, NIV)

Would you pray with me?