Luke 15:32

Making A Fresh Start

Dead, and... alive again. Luke 15:32.

I feel sure that every boy and girl here likes making a fresh start. Don't you love getting a new drawing book? The clean pages look just as if they waited for your pictures. You toss the old one carelessly aside; you feel you are done with it. That is a pity, I think; old drawing-books are most interesting. Take my advice and begin keeping yours.

I looked into one the other day. I learned many things from it, and they all had to do with a boy called John. He had a real taste for drawing; I saw that at once. “John has the making of an artist in him,” I said to myself at page number one. He had had no lessons, yet he seemed to be able to do wonderful things with his pencil. You should have seen the soldiers on that first page. There was very little drawing in the picture: the men were just put in with a few strokes; yet, how they ran! But before I had turned over a few more leaves I discovered that while John was an artist he was first of all a boy, a boy, too, like a great many others. He liked making fresh starts, and he was inclined to stop there.

I knew another clever boy. He was much older than John almost a man, in fact. I shall give him the name of Fred. He also liked drawing. But he loved painting. There was color in it, and the more Fred studied the color of Nature, and the colors of things around him, the more fascinated he became. He made up his mind that one day he would be a great artist, and he managed somehow to persuade his father to allow him to become a student at one of our finest Art Schools. When he started to work there everything was new to him; he had never felt so happy.

One thing annoyed him, however; he could not stand the color of the wallpaper in his bedroom! The lady in whose house Fred lived had taken a great liking to him. Fred persuaded her to agree to a new paper being hung. “I will do it myself,” he said, “if you simply allow me to choose the coloring.” He chose a plain brown cartridge paper. Artists all like it, because it shows up their pictures so well. Fred had managed to collect not a few fine sketches, so when the room was finished even the lady who had to pay all the expense was pleased. She quoted, “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.” And Fred was happy. When he had left school, his father had sent him into an office, and he disliked it. Now he had made a fresh start; he had begun to live.

But a month or two passed, and Fred was “slacking”; another month, and he had ceased to care for his pretty room. When I saw it everything lay about in great disorder. The fine sketches were on the walls, but at once one could tell that it was the room of a fellow who “didn't care.” He made another fresh start. You will be glad to hear that he is now getting on famously. Where do you think he learned the great lessons of life? On the battlefield.

New surroundings do help us to make fresh starts. Why, even if a little girl but gets a new dress, a new hat, and new shoes, she feels she is somebody more important than when she wore her old clothes. But new clothes may have a better effect than that. They may make a girl feel that she wants to be tidy, to help mother, to be a real lady. Boys are just like girls, only different. What boy does not feel he is a new sort of being when he puts on his first sports' outfit? It is getting up a step, and he makes all sorts of good resolutions.

Now, think of how well Jesus Christ understood us. The most beautiful story in the New Testament is about a fresh start. A young man went away into the far country and tried to forget his home, but could not. He fell very low indeed, and when at last he “came to himself” and returned to his father, who had never ceased to love him, one of the first things the father did was to call for the best robe in the house, the ring of sonship, and new shoes. And I believe he dressed his erring boy with his own hands.

Boys and girls, we are about to enter a New Year. All over the world the New Year is spoken of as a time for making fresh starts. Even in far-away India, where the boys and girls get bewildered over the number of gods they are told about, there is a New Year goddess. “Her work is to look into every house on New Year's Day to see whether all is clean and in order. If she finds a dirty house she will send bad luck all through the year. A week before she comes everybody is cleaning, cleaning; all the dark corners are swept out; all the walls and the doorways are painted in grand patterns; all the idols are washed Little girls wear their best dresses then and put marigolds in their hair; fathers and mothers and all are clean and grand. Then all the lamps are lit so that Lakshmi may see into the corners, and everybody keeps the Feast of Lamps and makes holiday.”

Make a fresh start with the New Year. What can you do? There were days at school during the Old Year when you yourselves felt that you were mean and spiteful. You lost your temper, you had unkind and suspicious thoughts about your schoolfellows. Make a fresh start today by asking God to help you to be true and noble and kind and good. As citizens there is a great work waiting for you a work that will need all the earnestness of which you are capable, and you cannot wait till you are grown up to acquire it.

You will be happy in being earnest. You will play your games all the better; you will be better sons and daughters; you will be better brothers and sisters; you will be better at getting along with others. There is not a man of us who does not wish he were in your place, and could live to see what God has in store for us. We believe it is something good. Boys and girls, try to deserve it; then, even in making the effort, the New Year will be a happy one for you happy in the highest and best sense.