When will I learn? You’d think by now, aware of the limitations of my blindness, I’d be careful, really careful with the experiments and projects my 6-year-old granddaughter and I do.
“It’s a disaster,” she groaned.
She was right. I had placed the hot iron on the paper covering the group of beads she creatively arranged on a pegboard. The iron was too hot? I pressed too hard? Or missed one step in the instructions?
Don’t know. But after I lifted the iron, part of the melted beads had spread on the carpet, burning a baseball-size spot. Gulp.
After we dried her tears of disappointment, I took a deep breath, and then wisdom trickled in.
I knelt on the carpet and once the rug had cooled, I gently rubbed the palm of her hand on the scorched spot. “Feel this? This will help us remember that when we mess up, it’s not a failure if the mess-ups teach us a lesson.”
“What lesson?”
“To read instructions more carefully.”
How many disasters have you have in life? Broken relationships, financial troubles, bad decisions, failed careers.
And the mess is there. They formed a rough spot in our heart, difficult to clean up. Heartache and regret melted in areas where they shouldn’t.
What if we didn’t consider them failures? Instead, those very events can become God’s powerful reminder that He still restores. Because of Him, we may stumble, but will never fall. Relationships end, but His love still remains vibrant. Finances crumble, but He still provides. Careers end, but He gives new beginnings. Illness wants to shake away our peace, but His hand stops the fear.
When embracing the lesson, life smiles again as we repeat: “I will praise the LORD, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. I have set the LORD always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.” (Psalm 16:7-8).
Father, how often the failures, mistakes or calamities of life had threatened to shake me. But now, because you’re near me, peace still sings in my soul. And I know each broken area is the lesson that teaches me to wait in expectation for something new, something better, something richer and something worthy of your praise. In Jesus’ name, amen.
• What has failed in your life lately?
• Where do you find the lesson?
• How will you allow God to turn it to good?
Janet Eckles
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