“Of all the words declared by men, The saddest are, ‘It might have been.’” Regrets rot the soul. Maybe you’ve seen videos of someone offering people cash to answer one question: “What is your greatest regret?” Just hearing the question, many dissolve in tears.
Some regrets are a reminder of unfinished business. If we don’t correct old wrongs when we can, we’ll rue them when we can’t. That’s why you can never do a good thing too soon because you never know how soon it will be too late.
Other regrets are unreasonable; see them for the ghosts they are. “The feelings that hurt most…are those that are absurd,” wrote Fernando Pessoa.
“The longing for impossible things,…nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else….”
Life is too short and too precious to waste it nursing regrets, hurt feelings, and grudges. When they haunt you, take a good hard look at them. Is there a way to fix them? Then do it. If not, we need to put them in God’s hands.
Let’s commit not only the future but also the past to the Lord. He’s the God of the eternal NOW. Jesus said, “Before Abraham was, I am.” (John 8:58) Nothing is out of His reach.
Many years ago, my grandfather had a neighborhood grocery. He took a half-day off each week to visit the needy. Nearby was a hospital for those with mental issues. On several visits, he noticed a couple sitting and quietly talking. He was the patient and his wife the visitor.
My grandfather couldn’t discern the issue that brought him there until, one day, the man rose from his seat and said, “I shouldn’t have done it.” His wife gently took his hand and tried to guide him back to his seat. Instead, he began pacing the room, muttering over and over, “I shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have done it.” This continued until my grandfather had to leave.
The next week, he had an opportunity to speak to the wife as she waited for a bus. What was it, he wondered, shouldn’t the dear man have done?
Just before the Depression hit in 1929, she said, her husband had left his secure job at a large company to join a friend in a new venture. But when the economy collapsed, all was lost. Her husband couldn’t find other employment.
“He’d sit at the kitchen table,” she said, “staring into space. Then, after a while, he’d say, ‘I shouldn’t have done it.’ After weeks of this, he began pacing through the house, repeating, ‘I shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have done it.’”
Life is assessed backwards but has to be lived forwards. Listen to these wonderful words: “One thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philipppians 3:13-14)
Of course, the one decision you don’t want to delay now and grieve forever is personally receiving Christ as Savior. Listen to this! “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.” (Acts 3:19, NIV)
THAT you will never regret.
Article by Jabe Nicholson first published in the Commercial Dispatch, Saturday, April 20, 2024.