Clean Slate

Well, we've come to the close of another year and I'm sure with it comes all sorts of feelings and emotions. I would guess feelings of excitement and an anxiousness of what the new year holds or maybe guilt and regret for things we said or did over the past year. A lot of people use this time of year as an opportunity to start over, to change something about themselves they don't like or want to make better, usually in the form of a resolution or two. So as I was thinking about the passing of one year and the coming of another, I started wondering what, if any, significance this might have in regards to one's faith.

Reading through Philippians the other day, I was struck by Paul's words of "forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead" and I started thinking...I wonder how many of us miss out on the things in front of us because we are so focused on the things in the past? Jesus himself talks about giving us life to the fullest, about setting us free from the past; the guilt, the shame, the baggage, the sin in our lives. We have the opportunity in and through Christ to start over with a clean slate. This isn't to say the past goes away but instead I think it says that we have hope despite our past.

So what better time than the New Year to let the past be past and allow Christ to set you free from the things that are weighing you down? Paul says it's a strain, that it isn't easy but it's worth it and could be the very thing to change your life.