Last year the people of my church gave me a most-useful gift for which I was very thankful—a new laptop computer.

I had never owned one before, but had wanted one for a long time. It has been immensely helpful to me, both at home and on the road.

As I finished my work at church the other day and started to close my laptop, I noticed that the screen seemed to be stuck in the open position. I applied a little extra pressure but did not force it to close. Then I remembered that I had placed the plastic end cap for an external information storage device on the keyboard. I removed it and the screen went down effortlessly as it always did.

I wish that was the end of the story, but it is not.

When I opened the screen again I noticed that there were strange lines on one side of the screen blocking what was displayed there. After a little investigation I found that the screen had cracked when I tried to close it.

As much as I wanted to go and reverse the damage, that was not possible. I am still using the computer, but I have to minimize everything that I do since only a portion of the screen is functional. It sure seemed like a lot of damage for such a little bit of pressure!

That was an unforgiving incident. The screen can be replaced, but I cannot go back and undo the damage to the old one.

We should all rejoice every day because of the forgiveness that God has made available to us through Jesus Christ.

As humans, we make such an abundance of blunders in life in the form of bad decisions and sinful actions that if it were not for God’s forgiveness, our lives would persist in a state of brokenness.

As Christ shared the last supper with His disciples before His crucifixion, He used grape wine as a symbol of His blood that was soon to be given in sacrifice for the sins of humankind.

He told them, “This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28, NIV).

He paid the price for our sins with His own life on the cross of crucifixion so we can have what we could never obtain or deserve on our own: Hearts that are cleansed from sin and lives that are acceptable in the sight of God. That beautiful forgiveness is obtained by believing upon Christ and what He provided through His death and resurrection, asking for His forgiveness and then, through repentance, turning from the life of sinfulness unto the life of surrender to Him.

Even after accepting Christ as our Lord, there are times when we struggle and fail. Thankfully, the beauty of His forgiveness makes provision for us there too. The words of I John 2:1-2 are both comforting and reassuring in times of spiritual failure: “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have One Who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.”

We cannot go back and undo the wrong things that we have done, but God has something better. By trusting in Christ we can have His forgiveness that will take our broken lives and fix them so that they are new in the sight of God.