“This page intentionally left blank.”

“This page intentionally left blank.”

I used to read that statement on “blank” pages of documentation at a company I worked for. I never quite got it..it was one of those paradoxes that haunt you. Was it supposed to be blank, but some comic scribe just had to write on it? Was it the companies idea of a blank page, except it wasn’t really blank? Was it corporate graffiti? Come to think of it, has anyone ever seen a blank page? If you look close enough, you will always find some defect, or blemish. I’ve never seen the Declaration of Independence in person…I’d love to, but I would imagine that even such a perfect and important document has marks and blemishes. I’d like to think that, to an extent, our lives started out as a book of blank pages, and events and choices all contributed to the making of our living tapestry (to mix a metaphor mid-stream…dang, I did it again). But circumstance of birth (geography, race, gender, social status, etc.) had written quite a few pages before we took our first breath. Would we be tall, skinny, short, bald, blue-eyed, freckled, “smart”, cheerful, introspective, outgoing… pick your own, you get the point. I like the expression, “we are where we are”. It means I don’t have to spend energy worrying about all the reasons we aren’t somewhere else, (assumedly where we were supposed to be). But how do you get to the place where you CAN leave the past behind? Where you can erase what has been pre-ordained, or written on you? I don’t know if you really can. For me, the best I can do is say “I am where I am” and try to walk a little straighter from here.

When I look at examples in the scripture of God intervening in a person’s life, I don’t see where He wipes out their past. Jesus forgave the woman caught in adultery and then said don’t do it again, but He didn’t wipe out her past, or the memories of her past in this life. I think He leaves them there…the hurts, the disappointments, the failures, so that we look at them, and with a grateful heart, say “Thank you for saving me”. In Zechariah, Joshua the high priest appears before the Lord in filthy garments. (What happened to the “transformed life”?) But Jesus commands those in front of him to remove the old garments and replace them with new, clean clothes. In the end we are transformed, we become truly the new creation. For now, we put aside the old, the hurts and bruising, and we come with a thankful heart, to a Savior that sees us as friends, as clean, as a blank canvas for His creation, and we say Thank You.