ABOUT CORRECTION FLUID....

One of the marvels of my computer is how spell-smart it is. I'll be typing along, my fingers flipping over to wrong keys and noticing those “oops” are automatically corrected before I can blink. If not, I just have to go to the “check spelling” command, which sleuths out all my typos and tells me it will fix them without charge.

I'm so glad to have survived the Dark Ages of typewriters, when any typos required special camouflaging. At first it was those white strips that you poked onto the typewriter roller, over your error, then struck the “bad stuff” to create a white surface (flaky as it sometimes was) over which you could type your correction. Then came a paint-on correction fluid--the invention, I learned, of a typist who concocted it from some paint she had around. Later, I got a typewriter with an extra sticky-white reel that did the same magic.

I once heard someone quip that Jesus is like white correction fluid: He covers over our sins. In a sense that's true, and somewhat biblical. First John 1:7 is probably the best known verse on that, declaring “the blood of Jesus, the Messiah, cleanses us from all sin.”

But comparing “correction fluid” to Jesus' sacrificial death on the cross to cover over the mess of a sinful world is a paltry analogy. The idea of “blood,” of course, is connected with the sacrificial system of Old Testament days. In slaying a perfectly good goat or lamb for a prescribed temple rite, the family was letting go of valuable property. On the other side of all this ancient practice—knowing now that it pointed to Jesus' death on the cross for the whole world's sin-debt—the “covering of blood” makes sense. It is powerful symbolism that was even carried into the mysterious proclamations of “end times” in the book of Revelation (Rev. 12:11).

Put simply, Jesus' death wasn't “white correction fluid.” It was a new beginning. Fresh paper, error-free. A foretaste of the perfection being prepared for us in Heaven.

Before his death earlier this summer, my husband spent more than two weeks in the hospital. I'd wake up in the morning knowing my day meant going to his hospital bedside, holding his hand, and just waiting. And for what? One morning, God seemed to be giving me a gracious hint when a little radio in our bathroom automatically turned on. My husband had programmed it for 7 a.m., about the time when he showered and shaved. And what would come on that morning, from our local Christian radio station? A contemporary song about heaven, with the words, “I can only imagine.” I lay in bed and wept.

Yes, we can only imagine. Heaven won't be splotched with white correction fluid. It will gleam and glow with the perfection of a crucified, risen Savior and a loving Father-God. No errors, no sin, no sorrow. Just splendid and absolutely right.