Regrets (Photo credit: chris.chabot)

There is hope for all who believe Jesus is the Christ of God.   This hope we own varies from one man to another.  Though the Lord would have us all own proper and full hope in our faith, it goes without saying that each of us is limited in our hope by the faith we employ.

There was a man who found himself a hindrance to everyone he touched.  No matter how he tried, he found himself full of trouble for everyone.  And the longer he lived the worse it seemed to become.

Now, there came a day when he had done damage to one soul too many.  The desire to become helpful was replaced by a simple desire to die.  “What good am I accomplishing?”  He said to himself.  “My faith is my life.  But my hope is becoming nothing.  If I cannot do good for my fellow man, what makes me think I will be received in eternity?”  With this in mind the man contrived a solution.  He thought to himself: “Sin is death.  I am not worthy of life.  So I will turn to sin so that I will kill myself.  Worthless is what worthless does.”

While in some respects this is a rather noble idea, but it did not bear the fruit he had hoped.  One day, while the sin was a distance from his mind, the Lord spoke to him.  “You will be completely forgotten.”  The meaning of this was not lost in the man’s mind.  For every word of the Lord brings with it an image of meaning.

At the gathering of God’s people on the day of judgment, this man would be gathered with the rejected.  And those rejected will be completely forgotten.  The man had thought that the Lord would recognize his sacrifice of himself.  He had in mind that the Lord would balance the scales the man could not.  The man understood the message and stopped the path he was on.  He turned toward the Lord again with a renewed effort.

On another day, after the man had turned from the sin of destruction to accept his place according to his ability, the Lord spoke again.  “You sacrifice for the sake of death.  I have sacrificed for the sake of life.  It is enough that you hope in Me.”

Many, so very many, are doing the same thing today.  They hold regret for the things they have done.  They drink themselves to death.  They do drugs until they perish from over dose.  They waste away their lives through self-debasement of every form, hoping that their self-hatred will be noticed by the Lord.  How are any of them any different from the man in this story?

Any sacrifice we make that has to do with the destruction of our lives is a sacrifice toward death.  But the Lord has already sacrificed what is Good.  He has sacrificed toward life.  Let us gather our strength, whatever is left, and turn to look at what He has done.  What have we accomplished if we are, in the end, gathered with the rejected?  We will end up rejected from man and rejected from God.  How pathetic is the end of such men?

He sees what we are and what we are able to do.  Rest in His perfect understanding and strive to trust.  There is no other release from the regret we all hold.  And let us ponder this saying:  “Regret is not in the family of repentance.  It is of a different family.  Repentance belongs to the children of the Lord.  Regret belongs to the children of this world.