She nearly dropped my chart and said, “Wow! This is a huge one. Have you been coming here all your life?” No, just eleven years now. If I had been going there my whole life, the chart would have been in volumes instead of just three inches thick.
You see, everything to do with my eyes is in that chart—every test, every procedure, every surgery, every referral, every appointment of which there have been as many as three dozen in one year. The doctor regularly writes two or three pages of notes at every visit.
That always makes me think of that other book being written that does cover my lifetime. I know there are pages in it I would love to remove. If I want them removed, imagine how a holy and righteous God feels about them. Doesn’t that make it even more amazing when we realize that He has taken out so many? I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, your transgressions, and, as a cloud, your sins: return unto me; for I have redeemed you, Isa 44:22. I hope when He finished blotting out the bad, it wasn’t totally empty, that there was at least a page or two of good left.
We sometimes seem to have that mistaken belief, that God has all the good stuff written on one side and all the bad written on the other, and that as long as there is more good than bad, we’re safe. Wrong. If He has any bad pages left, that means we haven’t repented of those evil things. Sin is so bad that it only takes one unforgiven sin to cost us our souls. When I say to the righteous, that he shall surely live; if he trust to his righteousness, and commit iniquity, none of his righteous deeds shall be remembered; but in his iniquity that he has committed, therein shall he die, Ezek 33:13. We simply don’t understand the enormity of sin when we treat any of them as small and inconsequential.
The next time you visit the doctor, take a look at that chart. How large is it? Imagine one a hundred times bigger, and then remember that probably a million or so pages have been removed due to the grace of God, and rejoice.
And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat upon it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne; and books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of the things which were written in the books, according to their works…And if any was not found written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of fire, Rev 20:11,12,15.
Dene Ward
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