Back in the days when everyone used typewriters there was a little thing called Wite-Out. Wite-Out dates to 1966 when an insurance-company clerk named George Kloosterhouse teamed with a guy who waterproofed basements to develop their own correction fluid. They originally called it "Wite-Out WO-1 Erasing Liquid."

You can still buy the product. Wite-Out isn't perfect. If you made a mistake on the typewriter, you'd have to take the paper out or get it raised up a little bit and then dab it with the Wite-Out, paint over the mistake, and then blow on it and let it dry. Then you could type right over it as if the mistake had never been made.

When electric typewriters came along, some genius invented something even better than Wite-Out—the self-correcting typewriter. Now wouldn't it be great if someday down the road somebody invented self-correcting people? Wouldn't it be cool if there could be a self-correcting husband or wife who would say the wrong thing and then just back up and say it over again right? "You know, you're just like your mother. Oops! Let's just erase that and start over." Wouldn't it be great if every spouse or friend or parent or child came with self-correcting technology?

But the human race isn't self-correcting. In fact, we're self-destructing. But in his grace God gave us one of his most amazing inventions—the gift of forgiveness. In a way, it is more powerful than Wite-Out. At the cross Jesus not only covered sin, he also absolves it, pays the penalty for it, and removes it as far from the east is to the west.