If Only I'd..

Some of the saddest words we will ever utter are “If only I’d..”. They are always used after an opportunity has passed, or a chance wasn’t taken, or faith weakened. They also come to mind after any opportunity to recover and make things right have long since gone.



We all live with regrets, some small and some large. It’s normally the big regrets that give us the most conscience trouble because in hindsight you can see how different things could have been if a little more time and patience and faith had been invested in the situation that we felt was so bad. I would go one step further. The pain when we realise the better opportunity was missed is always greater than the discomfort we thought we felt in the first place.


However, there is no magic solution because for as long as human beings have made decisions, there have always been the ones we lived with happily, and those we put up with until something better came along. That better ‘something round the corner’ never did come, did it, so we are left with a regret that can easily turn into a resentment?




If we are happy to quote “God’s Will” when things are going well, why do we leave God out of the picture if things don’t go as we had thought? Has God changed? Did we misjudge God in the first case when we openly talked about His will for our lives? I think we are guilty (I know I am) of giving God credit when He does things we agree with, but we distance ourselves from any notion of God’s will in any turn of events which we don’t like. In other words, we only trust His direction sometimes and that makes us part time Christians.




I trust and pray that at the end of 2018, none of us will be heard to utter the dreaded words, “If only I’d….” (you can fill in the rest yourself…). Now, have a Happy and Blessed New Year!