One is Ecclesiastes 1:15 it says in the New King James “ What is crooked cannot be made straight, And what is lacking cannot be numbered.” I like the way Ken Taylor paraphrased that verse he said “ What is wrong cannot be righted; it is water over the dam; and there is no use thinking of what might have been.” ( TLB)
Marlene and I have lived in Saskatchewan for 40 years now. Prior to that, I spent some time in Alberta but my growing up years were in Hay River N.W.T. You could imagine my farming experience was pretty limited. In the 37 years of pastoring the majority of those years have been spent in rural Saskatchewan. I remember being in Southern Saskatchewan and being asked by a farmer to help with his harvest. His goal was to teach me to cut peas and lentils. He had an open cab swather with a pickup reel. When I was on the swather being trained to cut the lentils I turned to the farmer and said “I don’t think I am up to this”.” Yes you are he said.” He had more confidence in me than I had in myself.
The longer I live, the more I can look back and laugh at myself. As the harvest went on we got to some fields that had sloughs. I remember the day we stood on the field and my farmer friend said I was to square up the field. I thought about what he said and thought well the field looks pretty square to me. What he meant I was to go around the slough one way and back another and then starting squaring it up. Well, I didn’t catch what he was saying on the first field. He left and I swathed. By the time he got back, I had gone around that slough several times. It wasn’t my finest hour. No real harm done it just meant it would take more time harvesting. So I look at Solomon’s words and he is telling me as someone put it “ The past can’t always be changed, and it is foolish to fret over what you might have done.”
God doesn’t change our past but He can change how the past affects us. One preacher put it this way “For the lost sinner, the past is a heavy anchor that drags him down; but for the child of God, the past- even with it sins and mistakes- is a rudder that guides him forward. Faith makes the difference.“
- Pastor David Bodvarson, Shellbrook Pentecostal Assembly
