Etch-a-Sketch God

So I've been thinking about God being an Etch-a-Sketch God.

Etch-a-Sketch God, you say? What?

Jeff Dixon used an Etch-a-Sketch last Sunday as an illustration of God's forgiveness in our lives, and it's stuck with me for several days now.

Did you ever play with an Etch-a-Sketch when you were a kid (or grown-up kid)? Remember how hard you work to make everything turn out the way you see it in your mind? Turning those little knobs, twisting, trying to sync your two hands to get a nice curved or diagonal line. Calculating how much room you need for each part of your masterpiece.

And then it would get all messed up. You turned one knob too far or too vigorously, and there's no erase button to get that one little mistake out. It's all or nothing. Not such a big deal if you're just starting your work, but devastating if you've actually been able to make some progress and then you screw up.

How long did you play with your Etch-a-Sketch before you got frustrated and gave up?

And then Jeff talked about this god-like Etch-a-Sketch artist. Seems he does masterpieces on the Etch-a-Sketch and then does this trick where he takes them apart and freezes the image in time so that it's permamently on the screen, and his work sells for thousands of dollars. You can imagine my amateurish frustration.

So a couple of thoughts keep running through my head. Things like--

Isn't it wonderful that God's forgiveness is as complete as turning an Etch-a-Sketch upside down and no image remains to haunt God or me?

I'm so grateful that I gave up trying to create my own Etch-a-Sketch life and let the master Etch-a-Sketch artist take over. His abilities and work exceed my own by a factor of 10 trillion to one, and it sure saves me a lot of frustration--as long as I keep my hands off those two little knobs!

I'm so grateful that God never makes a mistake in my life and never needs a do-over to get it right, even though He's working with a terribly finicky machine. It helps that He designed it and knows its inner workings intimately!

I've heard God called Almighty God, King of Kings, Savior, Lover of My Soul, the God who sees me, the God who heals me, and a long list of other descriptive names, but I think I really like Etch-a-Sketch God.

Click the following links if you want to know more about Etch-a-Sketches, the Etch-a-Sketch Artist, or how Jeff used the concept of the Etch-a-Sketch in his Bible study during the worship celebration at Covenant.