How old are you today?
You answer marks the length of your life so far. You know exactly how many years you’ve been living in this Earth. You can flip through your memory photo album and seek your birthday celebration when you were 6, 17 or 30. You can see the smiles that you put in your face – and those people who celebrate your special days.
But, if you keep on searching through those albums, can you tell how many days or months that you’ve spent carelessly? Or can you check on how many opportunities that you’ve left behind – because you were afraid to take it? Can you see how much money that you spend for nothing, but instant gratification? I don’t think you can do it.
What if nowadays we can use certain apps to check on our wrongdoings and edit them as much as we want? Some of us might think of this idea as absurd. While some others might consider the benefits of having such apps – rewind missing moments, travel back to fix our wrongdoings.
I did some simple editing to the photo that I use for this post. I just need to download the photo editor that suits my purpose, click here and there, and voila, I have edited photo ready to be posted.
Unfortunately, life is not that simple. We can’t download any apps to measure our wrongdoings or to edit it further. But, actually we do have the gift to do so. It is embedded inside of us. We are given with the gift to realize that we do things right or wrong. It is known as our conscience. Even though it is given, we still need to maintain the loudness of its voice. Sometimes, we can’t hear what it has to say, because we are so deaf with the loudness of the world. We acknowledge that principle of white lies, of grey areas – hence it is no longer suitable with the voice of our conscience.
Therefore, measuring right or wrong is not an easy task. We can’t use apps to replace our conscience in doing so. We need to consider and re-consider our plan before we execute it. What will happen if I say something to someone? Will it bring goodness for that person, or will it damage one’s existence? We know what’s right and wrong – we just don’t want to wear our spectacles correctly.
Once we did a mistake, we have to admit it. Another hard skill to master – after knowing right or wrong. Once we admit that we make a mistake, we need to show our remorse. We have to take action and ‘editing’ our past steps by doing so. There’s no such an easy step of doing it. We don’t have an eraser to delete our wrongdoings. We don’t have any remote to rewind and skip the scene where we made mistakes. But we can ask for strength to feel remorse, to repent and start anew.
One lesson that I learned from King David was the fact that every sin bears its own consequences. He made mistakes by having an affair with Betsheba, and sent her husband to die in a war. After King David repent, he still has to bear the consequences of his sins – the death of his baby and the cruelty of his children toward each other. The King did not ask God on why did he has to suffer after he repent. He knew that what happened afterward was the consequences of his own actions. He didn’t need any apps to realize that he did wrong and editing his life as much as he can do.
Can we do the same – editing our life without any apps?
My Writing Paper 