A Clean Slate

O

ne of the hazards of teaching class is chalk dust.  It gets everywhere and it coats and infiltrates everything.  Many a day, I have arrived home to find my pockets filled with bits of chalk and the ever-present chalk dust.  On more than one occasion, I have had it pointed out to me that my shirt and my pants were completely covered in chalk dust from leaning against the blackboard as I teach.  There’s just no two ways about it, if you’re going to teach, you must become acquainted and comfortable with chalk dust; it’s just that simple.

I must confess, however, that I am not stingy with my chalk dust.  I believe in sharing it with my students and on several occasions, I have them approach the blackboard to do exercises.  Invariably, several students will complain about the chalk dust and point out how it sticks to their hands, their books, and their clothes.  I simply tell them, “Welcome to my world!”

One morning, we had a particularly productive chalkboard session.  My students filled the board with sentences they had done for homework.  When the class started, I took several pieces of chalk, handed them to different students, and sent them to the board.  They wrote their answers, mistakes and all, and then returned to their seats.  When we finished reviewing and correcting the sentences the chalkboard looked more like an offensive attack plan from a World War II battlefield than answers to homework.  There were arrows, marks, and corrections all over the board when we finished.  What had started out as a clean, pristine chalkboard was now totally covered with errors and corrections.

By the next class period, I discovered that a small miracle had occurred.  As I entered the room, I was taken aback by the chalkboards covering two of the room’s four walls.  They were clean, perfectly black, showing no sign they had been the recipients of several errors only forty-eight hours before.  Where once there was chalk dust, and plenty of it, now there was only clean slate with no marks, no arrows, and no mistakes of any kind.  Were it not for the fact that I had witnessed all those errors a few days before, I would have never known any mistakes had ever been made.

What a wonderful picture of salvation this is.  Isaiah 43:25 reminds us, "I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.”  Here, God explicitly tells us that He not only erases our sins, He completely removes them and no longer remembers them.  We fill the boards of our lives with marks, mistakes, downright errors, and halfhearted attempts.  When we've finished making our marks, we step back and look at what we have produced.  What a mess!  It is impossible to tell where we started and where we ended and nothing on the board is ever right.  All our answers, all our theories, all the things we believe we know are riddled with errors, resulting in a board, or a life, chock full of chaos.

However, when we accept God’s free gift of salvation through Jesus Christ, He comes and wipes the slate clean.  He applies not only the eraser to take away the mistakes; God also applies a heavy-duty cleaner to completely remove any residue left over from our mistakes and markings.  The result is a clean slate, a clean life, a clean heart which is ready to receive whatever God chooses to write on it.  When we allow Him to write on our hearts and have control over our lives, we find that the board is never dirty and it is never riddled with errors.  All the mistakes we made are in the past and God, just like the janitor who cleans our boards, totally removes the markings in our lives.  They are removed and they are forgotten and we receive a fresh start.

In the classroom of your life today, what does the chalkboard look like?  Is it covered with chalk dust, riddled with errors, marked all over with your attempts to live a life pleasing to God?  Do the memories of all you've ever done in your life stare back at you from that board?  Then let God take the cloth of His love and the cleansing power of Jesus’ blood and apply them to your life.  Your sins and your past will disappear and as you become His child, you will start over with a clean slate!  Are you ready for some board work today?