Clean Slate

Most of us will have heard the expression: wipe the slate clean. The following illustration demonstrates how that expression originated.

Many years ago school children were provided with a thin stone slab as a writing surface. It was called a slate and you wrote on it with a slate pencil. Martin DeHaan told of a time when he had used the slate to draw a horrible picture of the teacher. Just then the teacher came walking towards him. Quickly he grabbed the moist sponge hanging beside his desk to erase what was on the slate. The evidence was gone in one swoosh of the sponge. How he loved that sponge.

There is an even better eraser. Did you know that, according to scripture, God can and does have a record of every word, action and even the thoughts of our minds? We can’t remove them. But the grace of God offers us an opportunity to wipe away the record of our negative words, deeds and thoughts. Isaiah wrote that though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. The slate can be wiped clean because Jesus death on the cross has paid for that to be possible. That is an act of grace: getting something good when we deserved something bad. It’s available.

Grateful for grace,

Henry Wiebe