How many of us can remember White Out?  Since the day I first started writing with a pen, that magic concoction of pigment and smell meant a do-over on my paper.  The original correction fluid dates back to 1956 when Bette Nesmith Graham invented it in her kitchen.  She was a typist and prone to making mistakes.  Starting with a mixture of tempura paint mixed in her kitchen blender, she developed the first “Mistake Out”.  She later formed her own company and kept making the product from her kitchen.  After a typing error when she accidentally typed her own company name instead of the company she was working with on a letter, she was fired from her job and decided to make this product full-time.  In fact, she even offered it to IBM, which declined the product, and she rebranded it shortly after as Liquid Paper. 

Liquid Paper and White-Out was invented for one reason…to blot out mistakes. Had Bette could have potentially used her own product to save her job by blotting out the mistake, but instead, she did not notice it and the mistake survived.  The work of Christ was actually similar to White-Out.  The Bible says that our sins are as dirty rags.  Our sins show up like crimson blood droplets on a white cloth…there is no hiding them.  But instead of using human eyes, Christ saw us through God’s eyes where our sins lying in the shadows are exposed and will be cleansed.  

Isaiah 1:18 says,

”Come now, and let us reason together," Says the LORD, "Though your sins are as scarlet, They will be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They will be like wool.

Jesus is looking through the books that outline everything that we have done in our lives.  But instead of using a highlighter to bring attention to our sins, He is using a large supply of proverbial White Out to blot out the sins that we have been forgiven for.  Just as the countryside had lost its beauty when the leaves fell, the snowfall today gave the land a brand new look, one free from the crimson stains of sin, but instead gave the pureness of white.  I long for that day when Christ returns to clothe us in white robes of righteousness.

Oh, and don’t worry about Bette.  She later sold Liquid Paper in 1979 to the Gillette Corporation for $47.5 million plus royalties.  So the moral of the story is…don’t be afraid to make mistakes.  Those mistakes just might be leading you down a better path, but in the end, it is White Out that will save us from judgement.