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FIRST-PERSON: ‘Undo’ — a key we all need


OCALA, Fla. (BP) — At the beginning of the ’80s when I started as a pastor, I used a classic typewriter that a member of my church gave me.

I wrote my messages with the typewriter as well as the church bulletin, which I usually had to repeat multiple times because of the mistakes I made. Later, I bought an electric typewriter that had a whiteout tape, which allowed me to correct my mistakes. But if you had seen it up close, you would have noticed that I frequently made mistakes.

As technology developed, I bought my first computer. It did not have a hard drive and was extremely slow. But it had a new key that I did not know how to use at first, and I soon found the convenience of it — the “undo” key that allowed me to correct any error by clicking on it.

From that moment on, I felt more confident writing any documents because I knew that if I made a mistake, there was a key that would correct it and nobody would notice. “Undo,” as one dictionary definition puts it, means to “cancel or reverse the effects or results of a previous action or measure.”

How good it would be if we all had a key like this in our own lives. Many times when I make a mistake or say something that I should not say, I think, “If I only had an undo key to correct the error.”

All of us make mistakes that are more serious than spelling errors or things we should not say, so it is important to discover that God Himself, before the beginning of the creation, had already thought of a way to help us to correct our mistakes.

As the prophet Micah declared, “Who is a God like you, who pardons without and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:18-19).

For those of us who believe and trust in Jesus, we have been granted a divine key that erases our mistakes: “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more” (Isaiah 43:25). That key activates the grace of God that has been revealed to us through His Son, Jesus Christ, once we admit that we have made a mistake. “Repent, then, and turn to God,” Scripture instructs us, “so that your sins may be wiped out….” (Acts 3:19).

We do not have to continue writing our lives on old typewriters with the fear of making a mistake in what we do or say. Our lives are written with the assurance that our sins are erased by the blood of Christ.

It was John the Baptist who said “… Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). The phrase “takes away” means “erase.” Jesus erases our sins and mistakes, and that’s better that any undo key ever invented.

    About the Author

  • Robert Lopez

    Robert Lopez is the Hispanic pastor with Highlands Baptist Church in Ocala, Fla., and co-founder of the Church2Church fellowship of Hispanic Baptists in the Southern Baptist Convention.

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