A Little Magic Rubber

There is a story told by a Christian teacher of a Japanese school girl who wrote a wonderful essay at school. The eleven year old girl sat thinking for a few moments and then rapidly wrote in columns down the page using the limited characters she would know at that age. Her title was “A little magic rubber”. She wrote, “As I quietly open my pencil case the perfume of my rubbers comes to me. (Most Japanese rubbers are perfumed.) There are red, blue and yellow rubbers. Some big and some small; long ones in fact rubbers of all kinds, but I don’t want any of them. What I want is a small magic rubber that would rub away the troubles in my own heart; that would rub out the suffering of other people; that would remove the pain in the whole world. If only I could find such a magic rubber.”

A little magic rubber! We can only guess what lay behind the longings of that Japanese girl. Can there be in the life of one so young, painful experiences which she longs to have rubbed out? It’s more likely that these painful experiences would come with age. However there is a little magic rubber that can do the trick for both young and old.

Isaiah, the prophet found the magic rubber when he wrote the words of God, “I have blotted out as a thick cloud your transgressions, and, as a cloud, your sins”. A clean slate is what God promises. Sins and iniquities that separated us from God can be removed as though by the use of a little magic rubber. Sometime in school the rubber wasn’t all that magic. Anybody could see that it had been used. The tell-tale evidence was on the page. That is not how God’s message leaves it. Isaiah also appealed on behalf of God, “Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” (Isa 1:18)

Naaman, captain of the mighty Syrian army, found the magic rubber as a leper. “If the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he saith to thee, ‘Wash, and be clean’? Then went he down, and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God: and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.” (2Kings 5:13.14) – He found cleansing when he obeyed Elisha’s instruction – Obedience to God’s Word is like the little rubber.

Thorough cleansing is what God provides in the gospel. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1John 1:9) That’s complete. No marks left – a tremendous little magic rubber. It does extend, in accordance with the little Japanese girl’s longing, to the whole world, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” (John 1:29)

Today, through the Gospel, you can have your sins blotted out. Paul reminds the Christians in Colossians 2:14 “Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;” There will be no mark left, for the God of heaven says about such who trust Him, “And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.” (Heb 10:17).

What can wash away my stain?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus

Oh, precious is the flow
That makes me white as snow,
No other fount I know
Nothing but the blood of Jesus