Remember the smell of a freshly sharpened pencil? Or how about a brand new Pink Pearl eraser? Didn’t you always put it to your nose when it first came out of its box? These are all tied to feelings of the first day of school and their images are now icons of our childhood — art in everyday life. Just to see one of these erasers should take you back.

Erasers are good things. They tell us we are going to make mistakes. We got an eraser not because we might make a mistake, but because we were guaranteed mistakes. Mistakes are an important part of learning.

Of course computers make it easier now. It was more critical when you had only pencils and erasers. You could erase your mistakes but never completely. It still left a smudge. You could tell something was there once. It’s like a scar.

Remember erasing so hard you took the lines off the paper? Erase too much in the same spot and you would rip open a hole. Pencils and erasers are truer to real life. Our mistakes usually leave smudges — sometimes holes. Our sins are forgiven, and as far as God is concerned — forgotten — but on earth, the smudges remain. Part of that, I think, is so we can tell the story of our mistakes — our sin and our forgiveness. Those smudges will be valuable as identifiers for others.

What’s more, we’re still writing, and still erasing. Who on earth has got this down? Who can continue without more mistakes? We may have switched to computers that absorb our trial and error without a trace, even correct us automatically, but in life, it’s still all pencils and erasers. It’s a good thing; otherwise some people might not even try. But the Holy Spirit is the Pink Pearl of our life’s composition — there to erase our mistakes and give us the courage and the power to write on.

Jesus still bears the scars of His death. They are the smudges of our sin on His humanity. We are told we will be perfect in heaven, but Jesus will not. He will bear the signs of the cost of our salvation — the wounds in His hands and side that He showed to His disciples even after His resurrection. If He had them then, He must have them now. I believe that is so we will never forget. We will thank Him for all eternity.