Anyone who watches sports–football, baseball, you name it–sooner or later will hear the announcer say about a ball thrown by the pitcher or the quarterback, “Boy! I’ll bet he’d love to have that one back.” But it’s gone, for better or for worse.

One of the best features in having a website is being able to go back into something you’ve written and posted for all the world to see–and brother, do we mean all the world!–and edit it.

What we call tweaking. Fine-tuning. Improving, amending, correcting, fixing. You get the point.

I suppose the process is similar for others who do this sort of thing, but sometimes you reach a point where you feel, “That’s all I can do for this article,” and you quit tampering with it and go ahead and post it. My son Marty showed me how to post these things a couple of years ago, thus cutting out the middle man (himself). It’s good to be able to do that. (If I sound like a 1940 model pleased that he knows how to do something in this technological age, I plead guilty.)

Then, once it gets on the website, the writer is able to read it as others do. That helps the writer see it more objectively and it’s how the flaws often stand out. A sentence doesn’t read right. I used the wrong word. Used a word twice in the same sentence; need to find a different choice for one of them. What did I leave out? What did I include that should have been left out?

The process of editing calls for me to back out of the blog and go through another series of clicks to enter the editing room. I read back over the manuscript (so to speak), and tweak it. Add a comma, shorten a sentence, and so on. At the end, click “save,” wait until it assures me the changes have been made, and voila! the article on the website has been improved.

At least, that’s the plan.

Recently, while on a long drive, I listened to the recorded book, “A Day in the Life of William Shakespeare,” by James Shapiro. Among the insights I found fascinating were that after this man, arguably the greatest writer in the English language, wrote a play or sonnet, there was a fellow who would come back behind him and change what he had written. He didn’t like this word Shakespeare had written or thought of a better way of expressing something over here.

Now, imagine someone critiquing what Shakespeare had written. Imagine the nerve and chutzpah of the person who takes pen in hand to strike through words and sentences by this man and inserting something he deems better. Who would do such a thing?

Shakespeare himself was the culprit. He was forever going back and tweaking his plays. That’s why some are found in numerous forms, with a few words or sentences different. Shakespeare did it.

It sure would be nice to be able to call up some of the sermons I have written and conversations I have engaged in over the years and edit them. Strike that line, insert something more helpful.

Click on rewind and go back to the 9th grade and straighten out what I said to the teacher that time. Fast forward to a particular date with a particular girl and show myself to be a Christian gentleman this time. Correct a white lie I told, undo a corner I cut on my taxes 30 years ago, erase a cutting remark I made to a church member when I was only trying to be cute.

In Congress, every word a representative or senator says is recorded and inserted verbatim into the Congressional Record. However–and this is the interesting part–before a day’s report is printed, the lawmaker gets to see the proof and correct it. If he/she said something wrong on the floor of the House or Senate, they get to undo it and restate it the way it should have been done. In fact, they can insert entire pages of material into the record, leaving the impression that they actually read or spoke all of that in Congress. I suppose that is to impress historians or constituents, although why anyone would attach any weight to the contents of the CR is beyond me.

Sure must be nice to be able to do that.

But since we can’t, we have to develop an entirely different set of skills. Four come to mind.

1) We learn how to say to someone, “I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”

Anyone who has not learned to utter those two brief sentences–and to do so without propping them up with blame and excuses and justifications–that person goes forward into life with a string of broken relationships littering his pathway.

2) We learn to say, “It’s okay. I forgive you.”

I heard of a fellow who said, “I never forgive,” to which an acquaintance said, “In that case, I hope you never sin.” Scripture says, “Freely you have received; freely give.” (Matthew 10:8)

3) We are driven to pray for the Lord to go before us and lead us in the path of righteousness so that what we say and do today will not need amending, tampering with, tweaking, cleansing or correcting.

4) We learn to go forward in spite of yesterday’s failures.

In fact, if we handle it right, we learn more from the failures than from our successes, so they can actually be a blessing in disguise. This is why someone has called failure “the back door to success.”

In the outstanding 139th Psalm, David prayed, “Search me and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. See if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.” (verses 23-24)

If that’s not saying, “Tweak me, O Lord,” I don’t know from nuthin’.