Write Stuff Wednesday:Work in Progress

“The beautiful part of writing is that you don’t have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.” – Robert Cormier

My son decided he wants to write a book. Yesterday he came home excited. “Look what I got for my book!” Out of a nondescript plastic shopping bag came a beautiful journal. Brown leather with a strap to hold it closed. Very classic. Very nice. Very costly. I can’t say I wasn’t a little bit jealous. My husband says I have a journal problem. I say 25+ journals, and very few of them filled, is not a problem. And yes, I can always use more. But that’s a story for another time. The focus of this one is my son’s journal.

As I thought about his new journal and the story he wanted to create on its pages, I began to wonder if he would hesitate in the writing. Would he mistakenly believe that the words he put on the paper should be the perfect words? Would he allow room for error in that beautiful journal?

With encouragement in mind, I did what any good parent who loves to write would do. I wrote him a note. It was short and to the point, speaking of the writing process. It said not to be worried about having to get it “just right” before writing. It was okay to have words marked out. Those markings are not the ugly signs of failure.  Rather, at the end of his writing journey he will come to see them as beautiful because they show dedication and growth in his writing. They will show how much improved the final work is from the original. They are the mark of the work in progress, and they are part of what will enable the finished product to be as strong as it can be.

It’s important to remember the same thing can be said about each of us. Salvation begins the process of God setting us apart as His own. It renews our relationship with the Father and sets Him up as the Lord of our lives. But this is a process. Becoming like Christ is not a once and done kind of thing. We are a work in progress. We will make mistakes. We will sin. But that doesn’t mean the work God is doing is ruined. It doesn’t mean God can’t continue to use us and mold us into the people He would have us be.

When we fail and come to God with a heart that understands the wrong we’ve done and desires to turn away from that sin, God promises forgiveness. It doesn’t erase that sin from existence. There may even be consequences we have to face, but we can have assurance that God has forgiven.  It will not be counted against the final work in eternity.

Sometimes our failures have less to do with sin and more to do with misunderstanding. We seek God’s will and move forward, but there are times we may find ourselves off course of where God actually desired us to go. It doesn’t mean God’s going to throw out the work He’s writing with us. He’s going to nudge us back in the right direction. When we’re honestly seeking to do God’s will in our lives, we don’t have to worry about “what if I heard wrong”. We can’t mess up in such a big way that our Editor can’t fix the manuscript.

Philippians 1:6 promises believers that we can be “confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” God isn’t done with us yet. We are a work in progress.  And just like the marked out sections of a written work in progress, one day we will be able to look back on the manuscript of our lives and see how God used the marked out sections to make us stronger, more faithful, and more like Him. That day, we will see the finished work, and it will be beautiful.