What If?

Today’s Longer Pondering:

Disappointment. It’s an ugly word. We don’t want to cause it in others. We don’t want others doing it to us. But it happens often. And when it does….the thoughts start.

But why do you and I spend so much time mulling on past disappointments? Why do we rewind and replay, asking “What if?” as if emotionally training ourselves to be better humans when the next situation like that comes up again?

I realized this week that I’ve never come across any verses wondering what life would have been like if Adam and Eve wouldn’t have screwed up. And yet God just seemed to whip out a brilliant, MIND-BLOWING repair job called ‘salvation’ that quite possibly left the original plan looking lackluster. What if God wanted to do the same with each of my failures and mistakes? Like instead of a failure meaning I missed a huge opportunity, God wants to take the remaining fragments and make them into something remarkably better?

We will probably never know what life could have been like if we had gotten that job, or not lost that person, or opened our mouth to say that one thing, or took the other option. But I do know that God isn’t cheap in His redemption style.

I am starting to think that while screwing up is awful, we weren’t designed to stay in that place for long. I think it is super important to take the time and figure out how and why we fall–we were designed to deal with it, make things right, and grow up and forward into whatever God is scheming. But to feel like our “glory days” were behind us to put God in a box that He doesn’t even fit in.

There is too much language in the Bible of God’s view of what’s “next”. “See I am doing a new thing, don’t you perceive it?” “…plans to give you a hope and a future…”. “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no heart as known…”. Once our mistakes and surrender mingle with His grace and redemption, they set the stage for the unbelievable.

I really believe God is always planning on one-upping us with how He will fix things. Always working out things for our good, always setting us up to be dumbfounded by more of His love. Even our past can become an idol if we don’t grab hold of what God is up to now.