I enjoy playing chess against my computer. It’s a way to pass the time while I’m on hold waiting to talk to someone from my cable company. I played for quite a while before I discovered that if I made a bad move and clicked on the “Game” button in the top left hand corner that a drop down menu would reveal a magic button that said “Undo.”
What a wonderful button! Anytime I made a move that was disadvantageous to me I could let my mouse drift to the game button and press “undo,” and try again. After I discovered the “undo,” button my statistics went up considerably. It’s not cheating. It’s learning.
Don’t you wish life was like playing chess with a computer? Don’t you wish you could click on “game” and have a drop down menu that would offer you the opportunity to undo, to back up, to take another run, to learn?
I believe there IS such a button. When we make a wrong move in our “game” of life we can “drop down” on our knees and ask the Lord for an “undo.” We can ask for forgiveness and receive it.
However, when we are forgiven there are still steps we need to take to undo the damage. It’s one thing to be forgiven, but it’s another to work to undo damage done. We have to forgive others.
Jesus taught us the golden rule, “do unto others as you would have them do to you.” He also taught us to pray. When it came to forgiving, he told us to ask him to forgive us as we forgive others. I think that if Jesus played computer chess, he would have said, “give undos unto others as you would have them give undos to you.”
In the church today we will begin a season we call Lent. Tonight at 7:00 p.m. we will have an Ash Wednesday service. Like the season of Advent where we prepare ourselves to celebrate the coming of Jesus birth, the season of Lent is one where we prepare ourselves to remember his death and resurrection. Over these next 6 weeks we will be thinking about just what Jesus did to become the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” That’s the greatest of all…undos.
Joyful Life Lutheran Church 