REGRET AND RELIVE

I can’t imagine going through life and always making the perfect choice. To me, regret is that feeling one gets when we made a given choice that carried with it some element of loss, real or imagined. We may even feel that deep in our soul at the time, but it becomes a ghost that haunts our thoughts, sometimes for the rest of our lives.

The game of “what if’ often becomes a form of mental solitaire at some point in life. We can look back and reflect upon some opportunity we didn’t take advantage of in the past and have second thoughts about our choices. Perhaps the biggest regrets brew as a nauseous stew in our soul from the times when feel we passed on a choice out fear.

Such as when might have had a chance to risk say some investment or other aspect of our lives and gave in to the fear. Then we spend the time reflecting and wondering what might have happened it we tried.

As time drifts by, the mind seems to become more and more encumbered by such thoughts. In part because we have at times a world of diminishing options as we get older so it is only natural to have a few regrets when we didn’t make certain choices.

Going through the tedious exercise of self-lament never changes the past. What it can do is deprive of us of the vision to relive a given choice in a different form.

I think back to the story of people of Israel when they were in the desert. They send spies into the promised land to check it out. The spies came back saying it was a great land, but filled with giants. That it was impossible to claim.

Only Joshua and Caleb objected to this view. They insisted God would grant them the victory if they trusted him.

But because they were overruled by the others, they had to wait for forty years till that generation died off before God gave them both a second chance. Talk about a reason to have regret.

For me the simply point is that there are many reasons we don’t always managed to take advantage of a given opportunity. And among those is certainly the Lord’s timing.

The good news is that he can restore or give us reason to relive the experience, but in a positive way. That is providing it is his will and we are willing to accept the means he choose to grant us a chance to relive some part of our lives.

It is a choice we have to make at times and not everyone is willing. Some merely resist and in the process end up losing out on what God would make possible in a different time.

Never allowing the voice of regret to drown out the voice of reason and hope is part of the process of faith each of us has to learn. Hopefully without spending more time complaining than listening.