Well, you’ve officially survived the first day of school.  That counts for something—beginning a new school year is no small feat.  There are lots of famous quotes about how taking the first step is always the hardest, or how every journey begins with just getting going.  All true enough. 

But what if your first day didn’t go as planned?  What if you already messed up, started on the wrong foot, began down the wrong path?  Does that mean your year is already lost?

Not in the least!  Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great romantic, suggested that we “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”

It’s a nice sentiment.  But do you think he’s right?  Is it really that easy to simply forget our mistakes, move on, and act like they never happened?  And even if that were possible, is it prudent?

Perhaps instead we would do well to start with Proverbs 28:13, which says that “whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.”  This is why the writer of Lamentations reminds us that God’s mercies are new every morning.  In other words, it is not that we must forget yesterday’s blunders and absurdities—we can’t clean our own slate to begin with, and we shouldn’t “forget [our errors] as soon as [we] can,” or we will never learn to correct them. 

But Emerson was at least right that “tomorrow is a new day.”  He’s just wrong that we are the ones who can give ourselves a fresh start.  If we approach our mistakes with a repentant rather than a forgetful heart, then getting off on the wrong foot may not seem so crippling after all.  Then we can begin this day “serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with [our] old nonsense.”

So, if yesterday wasn’t the start you hoped for, correct your mistakes, don’t just forget them—and be thankful for this new day.

Have a wonderful day.