There is no delete button

“This is one doodle that can’t be undid home skillet.” – The Store Clerk, Juno

The delete key, one of the joys of living in the digital age. If you end up with something you don’t like you don’t have to watch it pile up in your garbage can, you can just delete it and suddenly it’s like it never existed. No wonder people can’t deal with reality, the mistakes you make out there last forever. There’s no erase, no backspace, or delete in real life; everything out here is permanent. It’s one thing to imagine what failure would feel like, it’s another thing to feel it, to live through it, to endure the sleepless nights, and the gut wrenching agony that you’re sure no one else has ever felt as deeply as you do. Which is stupid, everyone has failed one way or another usually multiple times per day. It just shows how self centered we are, that we think we’re the only ones to have ever felt like this. There are people all over the world who are far worse off than we are and yet we think we have the right to gripe about our car problems, while there are people walking several miles just to go to school. We complain about the price of food, while millions go hungry. The worst part is we feel justified while we do it, we claim it as our right to whine about whatever perceived wrong happens to own the soap box that particular day. Our hair, our clothes, having to wade our way through mountains of homework, the seeming injustice of a teacher that we swear is trying to kill us so they can devour our soul.

I have a feeling that if life did have a delete button that we’d all use it so much that we’d end up back in the Garden of Eden, because that’s what we all want, that’s what we’re wired for. The imprint of Eden is still on our souls and it haunts us all.

Every.

Single.

Day.

We desire perfection because man was created perfect, the image of God himself. (Gen. 1:26-27) But being like God wasn’t good enough for us, we wanted to BE God. We wanted to set ourselves up as the ultimate authority. To base holiness off of what pleased and brought glory to us, not what brought joy to the heart of The Creator. So we ate the fruit and crowned ourselves as the rulers of our lives, the spiritual coupe was completed and our lives are scared forever by that childish, reckless decision. Mankind, the being that didn’t even possess the power to create itself, let alone the world it lived in, decided it knew more than a being that has simply always been. (John 1:1-3, John 8:58)As soon as we overthrew what we thought was an abusive, unloving, dictatorship we regretted it. (Gen. 3:7) Ever since our desire has been to find the delete button for life so that we can go back to living in a world without sin. But no such button exists, there’s no going back and undoing that one terrible moment. That doesn’t mean there’s no hope though.

There may not be a delete button, but there is whiteout. (Isaiah 1:18)

In spite of our great rebellion God still loves us and pursues us with an unquenchable fervor. So much so that He designed the only plan that could rescue us from ourselves, despite the fact that it meant sending the second person of the Trinity, Jesus, to die in our place. (Matt. 16:21) So the deep, ugly stain of sin was washed out and made pure, and while it’s not as good as having never rebelled it’s better than never being rescued.