Pressing Undo -Thoughts about God by John Grant

“If the anger of the ruler flares up against you, do not resign from your position, for a calm response can undo great offences.” Ecclesiastes 10:4

Many items of computer software have an “undo” button. It allows us to erase forever your most recent action and redo it the way you first intended or should have attended. It allows you to dismiss mistakes and proceed as if nothing wrong had happened. It also allows you to restore something you mistakenly deleted. It is so easy.

Real life is so much more difficult. You can’t un-cook an apple or take back and forever erase words you have said and things you have done. We all make wrong decisions at some point in our lives. What’s worse is that no matter how much we repent and ask God for His forgiveness, what’s done is done and cannot be undone. While God in Heaven will forgive us, the consequences on earth are still there.

Many of us feel condemned by what we have done.

We fail to understand when God forgives our sins, He also forgets them. He never condemns us for something He has already forgiven.

What many of us do not understand, however, is the fact that while God’s forgiveness erases our offences from His sight, we still have to face the consequences of our wrong decisions. Life is not as easy as a computer program.

When we have done or said or written the wrong thing, we need to do what we can to right the wrong.

Often is not easy and something the world says is unnecessary, but the Bible teaches us it is. So, whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. James 4:17

One thing I learned as a pilot is that I should always be looking for a place to land. Life is like that. Whenever we make mistakes, we should always be looking for how to right our wrongs as best we can. Sometimes it is embarrassing. Sometimes it is expensive, but it is always the right thing to do.

We go through life making mistakes, some accidental and some foolishly intended. I have done my share and so have you. To err is human; to forgive, divine. (Alexander Pope 1711). The key is how we follow up. Young sailors are taught how to ride out a storm by heading into the wind, not from it. Don’t run from your mistakes; confront them head on. Try to undo as best you can.

As you ask forgiveness of others, ask forgiveness also of God, the ultimate forgiver. We do not earn our forgiveness. We do not pay for our own forgiveness. Jesus died for it before we ever committed a wrong. Unlike our forgiveness of others, He blots it out forever.