GOD'S WORD AND SPIRIT KEEP US FROM REPEATING OUR MISTAKES

Eternal Perspectives               by Sally Bair

Mistakes and boo-boos

Mistake 1: I recently made four trips to the DMV before finally having all the necessary documents in hand to renew my driver’s license.

Mistake 2: Once while on an extraordinary trip through Custer Park, I took dozens of photos of the huge herd of bison that crowded around my van and stretched way ahead, only to discover later that I had no film in my camera.

Mistake 3, but not mine: I heard about a woman who set her fancy cake on top of her vehicle while tucking a child inside and then forgot to remove the cake before taking off. It flew like a bullet onto an unsuspecting driver’s windshield.

Some of us could fill pages of our past mistakes and boo-boos. We all make them. Some of them may come from speaking the wrong words or at the wrong time. The foot-in-mouth disease seems prevalent in our society, and some of our mistaken words can be quite humorous. Others, however, are serious enough to cause job loss or broken relationships.

Mistakes and boo-boos have been our heritage ever since Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden. We redirect our focus away from God toward other things. We forget to use His wisdom and fall headlong into calamities of our own making. We lose our concentration. We rush through our daily chores without thinking about possible consequences. God created our brains to focus on the task at hand. If only we’d learn!

Even Paul the Apostle admitted to making mistakes. Paul states what many of us may be thinking. That is, what we want to do, we don’t. What we don’t want to do—or say—we do without thinking. He ends his confession with these words: “…it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me … I delight in the law of God … but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind …. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:20, 22-25)

Being imperfect human beings, we’ll keep making mistakes as long as we live. But thank God, He covers our mistakes. He may not remove the unpleasant results, but He will give us the wisdom and strength either to make them right or avoid repeating them.

Lord, keep us so focused on You and Your purposes for our lives that we can avoid the mistakes and boo-boos we’re so prone to making. Thank You for promising to deliver us from them. In Jesus’ name, amen.