This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness”

Lamentations 3:21-23

And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten”

Joel 2:25

Because of His great grace and mercy, God gives to penitent people the opportunity to start anew. As he told the people in Isaiah 1:18, *Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.*

Those who truly realize how great the depth of sin they have been saved from and remember the shame from which they have been washed, often have a deeper love for God than other Christians have. For even Christ told the Pharisee in Luke 7:47, *Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.* Such people are often

more enthusiastic witnesses for Christ than are the negative, passionless, elder-brother type of Christians who boast: *Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy com­mandments* (Lk 15:29).

The Salvation Army’s motto was birthed from this spiri­tual truth of starting over, “A man may be down, but never out!” Indeed he is not out, not when we reckon with the transforming grace of God. The sweet psalm­ist of Israel continues to testify to us in Psalm 40:2, ‘He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings’