Following the Easter holidays you might now be sorting through snaps of your family and friends. The camera never lies, or so they say as the rest of the family squeal with delight at snaps that record your best and worst moments!
Software enables us to improve things a bit: enhance the colour, cut out distractions, slim the waistline or improve the exposure. If you accidentally erase a good picture, you can recover it. Digital technology always leaves a permanent record.
About 10% of all the photographs ever taken were shot in the past 12 months. The popularity of camera phones plus digital technology enables us to store loads of photographs and brings an end to piles of albums. The recent trend for ‘Life-blogging’ will increase the number of photographs: every 30 seconds a picture is taken whatever you are doing. The device is no bigger than a postage stamp clipped onto your clothing. You can record all those memorable moments and also those best-forgotten moments! Upload to server and your ‘life-blog’ grows daily. What more could you want? One thing that comes to mind is a permanent erase for my bad bits! But what if there was someone who had an accurate record of every moment we have lived, every thought we have had and every word we have uttered?
There is a full and accurate record of our lives in heaven. Jesus knows everything about us, but still offers us a new start. His death and resurrection makes possible a permanent erase for our sins: whether these were deliberate or accidental. Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension identify him as our Judge (who we’re answerable to) and our Saviour (who alone can rescue us from sin and death). Jesus makes it possible to have a new start: ‘For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us’ (Psalm 103v11-12). His death also serves to purify us:
This is truly wonderful! You may not be entirely happy about what the holiday snaps reveal, but we can delight in what Jesus’ blood erases forever!
Paul Kingman