Rachel Whisman

Tears would instantly form at the first stroke of red ink that struck my rough draft. When I was young, my mom was kind enough to edit my papers. She was phenomenal at it, but it felt like torture. My vulnerable and fragile eleven-year-old self would start to fragment as the pen would lay marks on my writing. The illusion of perfection ceased. I thought I had done a good enough job. All I wanted was for my work to stay pristine, untouched, and whole. 

Almost twenty years later, this past week, the pen was now in my hand as I critiqued my student’s work. The errors were visible, and they jumped off the page. Words were squished together because there was not enough finger spacing; misspelled words littered the page, and punctuation- where was it? I looked up, and tears swelled in the eyes of a young boy. He was trying his best to compose himself as I kindly pointed out how he could correct his paper. The longing for affirmation was thick, and the temptation towards complacency was alluring. Slightly distraught, he took his paper, returned to his desk, and with perseverance, he went to work on his final draft. 

Our lives are rough drafts. We have been given paper to write down what we see, hear, notice, feel, and experience. We try to make sense out of it and use what we have to form coherent sentences and paragraphs. Internally, we hope it is good enough, by our own morals and effort, to be accepted. Yet, it falls short, and we don’t have it in ourselves to make it better. We are like my third graders, who are limited in their knowledge and power and finite in their abilities. God is not so; He is our master and teacher. He comes to us and sees the visible errors of our heart. The sins that need to be exposed, the endurance that needs to be tested, and the discipline we need for correction. However, each sin we commit, every iota we miss, will not be solved with the mark of a red pen, but by the blood of Christ. We will never be good enough, and our hope and assurance are not in that. It is only in the perfect work of Christ that we are made complete and right.

“Woe to him who strives with him who formed him, a pot among earthen pots! Does the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’ or ‘Your work has no handles?’ Isaiah 45:9