No cure, but a lesson indeed

Elizabeth the First once said, "The past cannot be cured", and Charles Kettering said, "One fails forward toward success." Paul said, "Not that I have already obtained it [this goal of being Christlike] or have already been made perfect, but I actively press on so that I may take hold of that [perfection] for which Christ Jesus took hold of me and made me His own. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider that I have made it my own yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the [heavenly] prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:12-14) The goal set before us is to move closer and closer to Jesus, so that one day, hopefully not too far into the future, we will be Christlike in our behavior because our hearts are healed, emotions are tender but strong, and our thoughts are made new.

Too many times, we seek to cure the past, as Queen Elizabeth insinuated, but we find it to be incurable. At best, we can sort out some things that didn't actually get 'done' as we wanted them to be 'done', but we rarely make up for whatever was lost in the past. As Kettering said, we only move toward success through the failures of our many yesterdays. It takes a few failures before most of us realize success, doesn't it? I think Kettering hoped we'd each learn from our failures, not repeating them time and time again. God's plan isn't much different! He wants us to see each failure for the 'value' it brings into our lives rather than seeing the failure as something that devalues us.

Many see failure as a stopping point. God sees it as an opportunity for a fresh beginning. We might want to throw in the towel, but pressing on is God's preferred action. Kettering also said we cannot have a better tomorrow if all we do is think upon the yesterdays of life. The 'days of old' are just that - old, decaying, and done with. We don't 'go back' - it isn't possible. Yet, God gives us a chance for 'do-overs' on occasion. The chance to restore broken relationships actually exists, but what was lost in the gap between the failure in that relationship and the 'do-over' might just never be restored. That 'gap' exists, is a part of the past, and likely will never be regained.

Whenever God moves us forward, our goal is to leave the past in the past, putting one foot in front of the other. Taking away the lesson from the loss is not always easy, but it is important for what lies ahead. There may be no cure for the past, but there will always be a lesson we can take from it as we move forward. Just sayin!