Can I Get a Do-o-ver?

Do you ever wish that you could just start the day over? How about the year? How about almost your whole life?

The first day of planting my garden, I feel pretty good about myself. I mean, there are no weeds, I mowed the grass, fortified my fence, put down some weed barrier—there was lots of sweat and a sore back—and, heck, I even had my dad make me two bluebird boxes to conquer some of the bugs. Standing there, looking over fresh soil and neat rows, it almost feels like nothing has gone wrong before.

I have a fresh start from the prior year, when my tomatoes endured late blight, I couldn’t keep up with the weeding of the first garden, and I became so overwhelmed with the amount of cucumbers I was getting that I started to pretend I couldn’t see them.

I kept thinking how I wished I could go back to day one and have a “do-over.” I would have certainly done a few things differently.

Then I tell myself, “Well, Amy, you would have missed out on some of the great things that happened, like the ‘garden party’ that I hosted with some of my beautiful friends and family, the perfectly crisp dill pickles that I canned with my daughter, and the muscles I built with the push mower and weed whacker.”

Luckily, in life, we can’t just get to start over anytime that we want to, but in our Christian walk… well, we kind of can.

God tells us in Isaiah, “Come now, let us reason together,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are as red as crimson, they shall become like wool.” Isaiah 1:18.

And He reminds us again in the New Testament, “For I will forgive their iniquities and will remember their sins no more.” Hebrews 8:12.

God knows that we will sin, and He offers us a way to have a “do-over.” Will it bring us back into right standing with God? Yes. Will it make everything okay in our life with others—or even ourselves—right away? No. Our sin has consequences, but we can still return to that place of being made clean, when everything was weed-free and our hope was full.

We can walk in that hope, made new like fresh fallen snow, knowing that our God is working all things for good. Our path may not look completely straight, but our repentant heart has us walking with Him again, on the path that ultimately leads to perfection.