This article is edited for content.
It contains my thoughts. They’re all my words. But someone else reads it before it reaches your eyes, dear reader. She is the editor. She reads over the article. She checks it for content. She sends back my third draft to ask,“Can you reduce the word count?”“Can you fix this sentence so it’s easier to understand?”“What do you mean when you say this?” That’s her job as editor: to check over what I’ve written, correct errors and make suggestions—all so that by the time this reaches your eyes, it’s clear, concise and easy to understand. I can read what I’ve written once, twice, a dozen times and
This Life Is Edi H I G H E R T H I N G S __ 10
still ignore that between my imagination and the page I missed an “is” in the title, added three commas where there should have been a period, didn’t define a fancy Latin word, left a run-on sentence to run on and on... The mind plays tricks on us. Fills in gaps for us on the fly. In fact, we are often blind to what’s obvious, especially when it’s our own work. In life, too, we could all benefit from an editor: someone who can translate us, even to ourselves, such as,“Rewrite that before you hit send.”“Delete what you’re about to say to her.”“Tweak that before you tell him.”
God’s Spirit does that very thing with us. Sin turns us away from God and neighbor. Sin also blinds us to the truth about ourselves. We think we’ve got it together. We’re doing alright. Or, not so great. We don’t know why this is happening to us. Why me? Why is God tempting me? Who we imagine ourselves to be is as upside down and backwards as what we imagine God is up to.
