We've all heard that regretting the past is a waste of time. We can't go back and change it. Yahweh's forgiven us for it, so why can't we forgive ourselves? It's only hampering our future to focus to intently on the past.
None of this is wrong, but I find there is another reason for not regretting the past that is not talked about nearly so often. Redemption.
Redemption is when Yahweh takes something that was broken and makes it whole again, when He makes sure that something negative becomes positive, when He takes what was never meant to be and turns it into the very thing that He had envisioned from before the foundations of the world. Redemption is beautiful. Redemption is amazing. Redemption is glorious.
Think about the state of the world right now. Wars and poverty, hatred and death. All throughout history we've had genocides, murders, depravity. The worst of the worst that can happen when man tells Yahweh that He doesn't get to be a part of the very world He created. If you're like me, you can see the degradation that society is existing in right now. The laws the United States has recently enacted, the militant anti-Christ that is working in this world. It all points to destruction and that can easily lead to despair.
But think of all that which seems to be utterly insane, a one-way ticket to Hell in a hand basket. Then think about redemption. The realization that Yahweh can actually fix all of that, that He can take the people who are enacting these horrors and perpetuating these evils and change their hearts and make them do the very opposite of what they've done all their lives. The only requirement for Him to be able to do that is that a man let Him into His heart and give Him free access to work His redemptive power therein.
I think about Paul, formerly Saul of Tarsus, who was part of the biggest detriment to the growth of Yahweh's Kingdom that existed in his time. He actively persecuted and killed Christians, even holding the cloaks of the men who martyred Stephen. He felt no remorse for this; he thought he was doing the right thing. He would have continued to persecute and murder Christians for the rest of his life believing that this is what he was supposed to be doing. Yet, when He met Yahshua on the road to Damascus, He was changed from the inside out. Allowing Yahshua to work in Him and through Him, He became one of the greatest assets to the growth of Yahweh's Kingdom. He wrote 2/3 of the New Testaments, started countless ecclesiae in the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and Asia Minor, and was responsible for the spread of the Gospel to the Gentiles.
Redemption.
It is utterly amazing that Yahweh was able to change such a man so thoroughly, use his life so completely that we, today, are still benefiting from his faith and the things he did through his faith.
I look back at my own life. It is hard to describe the lack of freedom I once walked in. I was clinically depressed from the age of 10. I still remember the summer I first began to take Prozac. I was just about to start 5th grade and I was so embarrassed that there was something wrong with me that I didn't want anyone to know I had to take that daily pill. Over time, I began to wallow in the sadness, to believe that nobody would or ever could love me. I gained so much weight that I topped out at 387 pounds. I tried to hide away from the world because I was afraid of it. All it ever did was hurt me, and I was sure all I could ever do to it was be a detriment. I did not look too far into the future because I was afraid that what I would find there, all I could ever be, was more of what I was then living in. A psychiatrist told me that I could expect a major depressive episode at least once a year for the rest of my life. Why, then, would I want to continue living? I hated myself, I hated my life, and I knew vaguely that there was a God out there who had sent His Son to die for me, but I did not have the relationship with Him that I do now.
Yet, He was there for me all along, and the life I live now is exceedingly, abundantly beyond anything I could have ever imagined or dreamed. I was healed of depression, I've lost 200 pounds, I have a job where I am helping people and doing good in the world. I have friends that love me and whom I trust. And what's even more amazing? When I look to the future, I only see more joy, more beauty. One day I shall have a husband and children. One day I shall change the world. And what I see is not even all that will be because even that shall be exceeded, more abundant.
It would be easy for me to regret the past. Sometimes, I wish I'd had the freedom I do now when I was in college or high school. My life would've been a lot different. I would've been one of those teenagers with friends who go hang out at the movies at night and have a curfew and parents who are waiting for you when you get home. But I didn't have that then. Instead, I have what I have now, and I get to hang out late at night with friends all the time.
Because Yahweh has returned to me everything I'd lost.
And so I am grateful for the past. For the horrible times and the times when I was just holding on to life by a thread. I could easily have died, for suicide presented itself as an option to me many times over the years. But I did not because of Yahweh. Because I knew my life was and is His and I did not want to steal it from Him as the last thing I did on this earth.
Then look where He has taken me. The contrast between what was and what is is unfathomable to those who haven't seen it, haven't lived it, themselves. Yet, I believe that the contrast gives Yahweh a greater glory and I hope it will show others, as Paul's life did, that Yahweh can truly do what is impossible in any situation so long as He is given access. Trust Him. He is good.
Because redemption is beautiful. How can any being take all that is horrible and ugly in this world and make it perfect again? But that is what Yahweh will do, what He did when Yahshua died on the cross and said, "It is finished." When He said "finished," He didn't just mean done. He meant perfected. In other words, He said, "It is perfect again." Perfect again... Redeemed.
Yahweh... He created an infinite universe that was utterly perfect. He put every intersection of space and time, of people and places, of hearts and beings and feelings, everything that ever was, is, or could ever be He mapped out and made to flow perfectly. The unrolling of creation was the perfect symphony of harmonic sounds, the perfect blend of colors on a canvas, the perfect combination of words in a poem. And then it was broken, slashed into an infinite number of minute pieces that we as part of creation kept trying to fix but could never have fixed because the pieces were so small that we couldn't even see them. Yet He fixed it. He put it all back together again. He redeemed creation.
Redemption is beautiful. So the past is beautiful. It is not something to regret, it is something to provide a contrast to what we are living in the present so that we can be more grateful to Yahweh having known lack than we would have been if we'd only ever lived in plenty. So that Yahweh can be seen as more glorious for having redeemed what was broken. Because I don't think I would know how perfect my life really is right now if I had not known the oppression that I lived in before.
The horrible and wonderful process of redemption allows me to know Yahweh. He is worth it. So I am so grateful for the process.
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