The tough art of making choices and mistakes

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Life is about making choices. Everyday all of us make dozens, maybe hundreds of choices. Luckily, most of the choices we make are trivial and don’t have a considerable impact on our lives. However, there are choices that can change our lives for good.

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As a human being, one of the first things we learn is to make choices. And at the same time, we have to learn to live with the consequences.

Have you ever thought that a simple choice like asking someone out on a date can be one of the most important ones you’ll ever make? You may say, “No, asking someone to marry me is much more important”. Yes, but it all begins with a date…

One of the things I like about the Bible is that it shows the lives of regular people like you and me. People that had to make choices, and the Bible doesn’t disguise their mistakes. After all, making mistakes is also part of our lives, we learn from them.

I am sure you can list a lot of bad choices that people from the Bible made, even the ones we call “heroes of faith”. For example, David arranged for Uriah to be killed in battle so he could have his wife, Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11).

What’s interesting about this episode is that David didn’t realize what he has done, until Nathan talked to him and made him see his mistake. This is how it happened:

The LORD sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.

“Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.”

David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this must die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.”

Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man! [...]” – 2 Samuel 12:1-7

That’s when David realized how much hurt he had caused. Until then, he hadn’t worried about anyone else. Nathan’s story made him identify with the victim for the first time. Then it hit him.

He must have felt like the worst human being in the world at that moment. Then he repented, God forgave him, but he had to live with the consequences of his choice.

David’s experience teaches us important things:

1. We need to trust God with our life and our choices. All of them, not only the ones we think are important. Because we can’t always tell their impact at first, but He can.
2. Before making a choice, we need to stop and think how that choice will impact other people’s lives. Ask God to show you what you might be missing.
3. After making the choice, we need to pray that God will show us if we had made a mistake so we can repent and do our best to make amends.

The great heroes of faith made mistakes to teach us important lessons. We will make mistakes, this is part of our lives. Let us pray to God that we can learn from those experiences and trust Him more and more each day. Even when we make bad choices.

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