A clean slate

I just spent two days reinstalling the operating system for my parent’s computer.  It's a 2GHz Pentium 4 purchased in 2002 and it had become unusable.  Not only was it very slow but it regularly crashed.  This was very vexing to my non-technically minded parents. 

They were all set to throw it out and get a new computer; but before they did I decided to try my hand at restoring it.  I formatted the hard drive, installed the operating system, added drivers, replaced applications and finally restored data.  It is amazing how long these things take, but after two days the computer was as good as new. 

When I think about it this is precisely what God does to us when we come to faith in him. 

We come to him with baggage caused by the installation of bad programs that only gets partially deleted.  We come to him with wounds caused by years of exposure to spam and destructive viruses.  We then allow other processes to run in the background sapping us of valuable resources that could otherwise be directed to a better use.  And we allow the our minds to become fragmented by the endless search for meaning in a meaningless world.

What we need is a clean slate.

And this is what God gives us when we answer the call to a radically new life in Jesus.  He wipes us clean and gives us a new heart, a new mind and a new soul.