NO MISTAKING IT!

"Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?” wrote Lucy Maude Montgomery,     author of the Ann of Green Gables books.

The same goes for beginning a brand new year. On New Year’s Eve many of us reflect on the past 365 days, perhaps lamenting the mistakes we made, planning to do better as the calendar flips over, and beginning again with fresh, blank pages.

The first thing I do each year with a new calendar’s blank pages is to fill in the birthdays and anniversaries of family members and special friends. I still love receiving good wishes, so I still send them out as well. I’m much less likely to make the mistake of forgetting to address them, stamp them and send them on their merry way if I’ve first made sure to mark down          everyone’s special dates.

Appointments go down next, those twice yearly medical and dental visits.  I admit that I’d sometimes like to “accidentally” make the mistake of forgetting those, but that would be a mistake with one’s health.

As the year progresses, volunteer  obligations are put on the calendar. If you make a promise to do something, taught my parents, you’d better follow through for sure. Disappointing someone who is counting on you is a big mistake.

It’s great fun to take a bright red marker and fill in some of those empty squares with much-anticipated opportunities like lunch dates with friends and maybe even vacations in warm places on those pages of “burrrr” months! Can’t mistake those!

While attempting to organize myself and my new year with a new calendar is a great help in keeping my mistake level down, it’s clear I am unable to completely mistake-proof myself. Sometimes mistakes just seem to find me, sometimes it appears I just seek them out and then there are the times my “mistakes” aren’t mistakes at all, but just plain sin.

As a fundamentally directionally impaired person, I will admit to having made the mistake of turning into a “don’t turn in here” traffic lane. As a sinful human being (albeit a forgiven one) I will also admit to losing my temper and using unkind words, something that is not just a mistake but   sinful behavior. There is a difference. Mistakes are unintentional errors in judgment. Sin is more than that—it’s a deliberate choice to do something I know isn’t right.

God’s Word declares that we all sin (Romans 3:23). We choose to do it. For that, I deserve death, but He gives me eternal life through Jesus (Romans 6:23). I like the way Ezekiel said it: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God” (36:26-28). In 2015, I long to be a better decree-follower and more careful law-keeper of His. There’s no mistaking it—a  happy 2015 it will be with God in me!