Aurora, a lovely 5-year old little girl, was being introduced by his father to her first activity book and a pencil.  She has had crayons before but this is the first time she will be writing the alphabet.  All she needed to do was connect the dotted lines to form a letter.

Dave, her dad, was patiently teacher her how to do this, carefully showing her how it should be done.  When Dave gave her the pencil and she started to follow his example, she began to cry because what came out in the end was slightly crooked.

“Hush, my dear. It’s okay.  The soft part at the other end is called an eraser.  Just rub it where you made a mistake and what you did will be gone, then you can try to do it again.”

Dave showed her how to erase her mistakes and she was happy again.

Although not a perfect analogy, the story above is much like what new “babes in Christ” go through.  New Christian believers have a hunger to learn about God.  They are starting to learn and see what the world is like from God’s standpoint.  Their worldview, how they understand how the world works, has shifted from the viewpoint of fallen man to the perspective of the divine.

We who are mature in the faith must remember that we ourselves were like them, that we needed to be guided and taught with great patience and with much grace.  It is for this reason that this month, all of us believers whether young or old should be reminded that our Lord has made us new creations. We should be joyful about how God has transformed us, gave us a new heart, and washed our sins away with the precious blood of our Savior.

This means that we should be open to God direction and guidance with how we should live our lives.  Let us not get stuck with the glories that we may have had in the past; instead, let us be prepared to follow God’s lead and be willing to accept the changes and consequences of living out our Christian faith.  Yes, we may stumble and fail from time to time, but if we repent and confess our sins and pick up our cross again, we will find that “the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end.” (Lamentations 3:22)

Therefore brothers and sisters in Christ, keep on running the race and fighting the good fight of faith.