Beyond Regret
I choose to live beyond regret and let You recreate my life. (from Brendan Liturgy, Part XVI in Celtic Daily Prayer)
Regret can easily pile up like an ever growing trash heap. At first there are just a few pieces of paper and a stray party favor. But then as more items accumulate the idea of cleaning it up seems impossible. It will take a bulldozer, and not merely a few garbage bags.
In the muck of the past it’s difficult to move forward. Past conversations and activities keep me focused on what might have been. I think of the opportunities I wasted.
I regret decisions to break plans with friends to go hang out with “cooler” people.
I regret actions that caused my parents distress.
I regret not doing work that I love.
However, these regrets don’t change anything. If anything, they slow me down. If I can learn from them and move ahead, that’s one thing. But usually that’s not the case. That trash heap blocks my way. I try to move it, but it’s always there.
At some level it can seem that we need to live in regret. God invites, commands us to repent from our wrongs. So, if you’re like me, you feel a need to rue appropriately what you have done in order to atone for misdeeds. Again, that doesn’t change the past. Instead in this posture we are always looking back and remaining there.
It can seem impossible to move beyond this place of regret. The trash heap is too large. We can never move it. But, what if we don’t have to make the change? Instead of regret consider re-creation. New life.
When Israel turned away from God he continued to call them back from their idols and errant ways. Over and over through the words and actions of prophets he asked them to turn from following idols. They had much to regret. Alone they were not going to change. But God had another plan. He could bring them back to life. Israel as a people had become parched. So God gave Ezekiel a vision of a land of dry bones - a trash heap so to say. They couldn’t move past what they had done But God could. He could re-create these bones with his breath.
Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord.” - Ezekiel 37:11-14
With such a vision, we can leave regrets behind. God can take them and make good. He can rework them. Those actions I regret were done without a thought to God’s ways. The way out is not to attempt to fix it myself, but to trust God this time to forgive, to wash clean, to burn the trash, and breathe in that new life.
