[While we’re traveling in Argentina, I thought I’d post some of the things that I’ve written for the HopeForLife.org blog; they’ve also been posted to Heartlight. Comments are moderated until I get back; sorry about that folks. Some people don’t know how to play nice.]

Alfred had dedicated himself to the science of war. A talented scientist and creative inventor, he studied ways to create new and better weapons. Specializing in explosives, he created dynamite. While you may think that he was a man who enjoyed war, quite the opposite was true. He felt that if he could perfect the instruments of war, it would be impossible for man to wage war. He once said, “My dynamite will sooner lead to peace than a thousand world conventions. As soon as men will find that in one instant whole armies can be utterly destroyed, they surely will abide by golden peace.”

That dream of peace through improved weapons was shattered by World War I. Alfred’s dynamite and other inventions were used to kill more and to kill faster. Yet he continued on his quest for peace.

One morning, Alfred picked up the paper and was shocked to read his own obituary. Through an error, a French paper had printed Alfred’s obituary instead of his brother’s. It was a terrible shock to this peace-loving man to see himself labeled as “the Merchant of Death,” portrayed as the man responsible for thousands of deaths. This was not how Alfred wanted to be remembered. So in his remaining years, he worked with lawyers to set up a foundation that would give yearly prizes for chemistry, physics, medicine and literature. Today if you ask someone about Alfred Nobel, few will call him “the Merchant of Death” nor connect his name with dynamite. We remember, instead, the Nobel peace prize.

We may not be able to change our legacy that dramatically, but we can do something even better. We can take our past mistakes, our old lives, the guilt and regrets that we’ve built up through the years, and have them erased forever. God has promised to separate us from them “as far as the east is from the west” (Psalm 103:12) … and that’s pretty far! God will look on us as though we’d never done anything wrong. “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Wouldn’t you like to wake up tomorrow and know that you can be proud of every aspect of your life? Jesus can make it possible. A new start, a clean slate. It’s there for the taking.