Looking Back
My friend Bob Schuur once told me a quaint, but poignant Pennsylvania Dutch saying: "Too soon old; too late wise." What the expression says to me is that I wish I had learned earlier the lessons I now know and done the things I no longer can do.
I suspect all of us have regrets about our lives, even as followers of Jesus. Are our sins, mistakes, and failures irretrievably lost, or can God reshape and redeem what we consider irredeemable?
I want to share a few of my regrets before I answer that question.
I wish I had learned earlier not to be so concerned about what others thought of me and instead be more focused on what God thought of me. I would have been a better leader and a more confident person.
I wish I had been a deeper reader of theology rather than the self-help, how-to books I too eagerly read. Deeper, challenging reading would have made me a better Christ follower and pastor.
Along with #2, I wish I had been a better student of the Bible which subsequently would have made me a better preacher earlier in my pastoral ministry.
I wish I had prayed more. Too often when I was younger, I just wanted to do something instead of to be someone. I would have prayed more.
I wish I had been more emotionally involved with my wife and children. I'm an introvert by nature, but that's no excuse.
I wish I had taken better care of my body. Honestly, family genetics is working against me (my father died of a heart attack at 43), but I should have been more disciplined in my diet and exercise as a younger man.
Can you identify with some of my regrets when looking back on your life? We feel all too often that the consequences of our earlier actions are set in stone.
But if we're followers of Jesus Christ, God has a way of sovereignly working our missteps into good. One of my favorite passages in understanding this is Joel 2:25-26:
“Then I will make up to you for the years
That the swarming locust has eaten,
The creeping locust, the stripping locust and the gnawing locust,
My great army which I sent among you.
You will have plenty to eat and be satisfied
And praise the name of the Lord your God,
Who has dealt wondrously with you;
Then My people will never be put to shame." NASB 1995
Whether the prophet Joel is referring to a literal locust invasion or using them metaphorically to describe an adversary's army is open to debate. What is important is that God says he will bring good out of the judgment and discipline he has rightfully imposed upon his people for their disobedience. He "will make up to you for the years...the locust has eaten." What that looks like or how it will work out is up to God.
J. I. Packer in his book, Knowing God, says it well in chapter 20, "Thou Our Guide":
If I found I had driven into a bog, I should know I had missed the road. But this knowledge would not be of much comfort if I then had to stand helpless watching the car sink and vanish, the damage would be done, and that would be that. Is it the same when a Christian wakes up to the fact that he has missed God’s guidance and taken the wrong way? Is the damage irrevocable? Must he now be put off course for life? Thank God, no. Our God is a God who not merely restores, but takes up our mistakes and follies into his plan for us and brings good out of them. This is part of the wonder of his gracious sovereignty. “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten. . . You will have plenty to eat, until you are full, and you will praise the name of the LORD your God, who has worked wonders for you” (Joel 2:25-26). The Jesus who restored Peter after his denial and corrected his course more than once after that (see Acts 10, Gal 2:11-14), is our Savior today and he has not changed. God makes not only the wrath of man to turn to his praise but the misadventures of Christians too.
Even for Christians, looking back can turn nostalgia into a nightmare. Misspoken words. Broken relationships. Lost opportunities. Life lessons learned too late. God can and will turn the tangled threads of our past into a beautiful tapestry.