I decorate sugar cookies. You know, the ones with the pretty icing and the neat designs. This past summer, I had a cookie order due and for whatever reason my icing would not set correctly. I decorated the cookies like I usually did, I waited for the icing to set, and it just wasn’t happening.

You see, usually the icing is smooth and shiny. Crunchy, but not too hard. The icing in front of me was messy, bumpy, and it was not cooperating.

Hold on, y’all, there’s a point to this story.

The order was due two days later, so I had a little bit of time to make it right. I decided to scrape the icing off the cookies. I made new icing and tried it again.

Again, the icing didn’t turn out. It was messy… the cookies were looking flat out ugly. As I scraped the icing off for the second time, the Lord spoke to me. It took my breath away.

I scraped all that ugly icing off the sugar cookie, and it was a clean slate. All of the ugly was gone. Just like the Lord does with us…. He takes all of our ugly and washes it away. We have a new slate.

Every single time we fail him, He forgives our sins. He scrapes all the ugly away. Every. Single. Time.

At the time I was very frustrated that my icing wasn’t cooperating, but the lesson was worth it. How blessed we are to serve a God who is faithful and just to forgive our sins time and time again! Give God your ugly, messy, or imperfect slate—He’ll wipe it clean.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.

2 Corinthians 5:17