Another day as pretty as can be. I’m up earlier than usual having slept the whole night through for the first time in a while. I woke to the birds singing and watched two squirrels frolic in the bamboo fronds near my bedroom window. Took Penelope for an early walk. The sky is a blaze of blue and beams of sunlight are kissing the dew making it sparkle like tiny diamonds on the grass and wildflowers. I saw a large robin in my neighbor’s yard, standing tall and proud. Such beautiful birds and legends say robins brought fire from heaven to earth. Folklore considers them holy birds, reminders of paradise and the Garden of Eden.

As the afternoon waned, Mother Nature got out her watercolors and started layering her blues and grays and whites as she prepared for the pageant of sunset. The horizon looked just like a blueberry cobbler with a layer of vanilla ice cream on top. A few dark clouds were random blueberries that dropped off the cobbler. The sun was blinding and bright when she rolled down the horizon in a pale golden light, dressed formally in a gown of pink champagne. Father Sky took her hand and walked her down the runway as she kissed the day goodnight and invited twilight to party on my freshly mowed lawn. Father Sky waked the moon and hung a tapestry of twinkling stars high in the heavens as a velvet darkness took over the day and a quietness settled on my yard. The evening’s symphony orchestra is tuning its instruments to join in the chorus of the night critters. They will lull me to sleep with their melodious sounds.

Laughed about this quote all day. It’s crude but it tickles me. Can’t remember where I heard it but it was in my pile of quote papers. “I got viagra. I got mace.” And written under that was this quote. “No one is perfect. That’s why pencils have erasers,” Wolfgang Riebe. Been pondering on erasers all day. The delete button on my iPad is a much used eraser!

No one of us is perfect. We all share imperfections and we all make mistakes and we all use the eraser. We don’t need to hold ourselves to an expectation of perfection because that’s not attainable by anyone. It would be wonderful to get that eraser and take away things we did that caused us or others pain. Pencils are wonderful things. You mess up, you just erase and start over. Erasers are reminders that mistakes are okay. Sometimes we have to try and fail before we get things right. We should all just enjoy being ourselves with our imperfections. Those imperfections are what make us unique.

I think Jesus was perfect, free from sin and always obedient to God. He lived his entire life on earth in obedience to his father. He lived a life of perfection and love and kindness. He was tempted but never yielded to temptation. God doesn’t expect us to be perfect. He sees and know well our imperfections and our shortcomings. He knows we’ll make mistakes. His love is unconditional and he offers us grace and forgiveness of our sins. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness,” 1 John 1:9.

God wants us to strive to do better and be better. Deuteronomy 10:12-13 states, “… what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord.” God wants us to love him and worship him. God wants us to grow in our faith and live a Christian life. God wants us to treat people fairly and respectfully, to have compassion and humility, and to show kindness to others. God doesn’t expect us to be perfect.

“God has graciously given us all things. Yet when he handed us the Bible, the one thing that he didn’t give us was a pencil with an eraser on it.” ― Craig D. Lounsbrough