What’s Done Is Done

It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I may learn Your statutes.

Psalm 119:71

The Chicago Tribune reported that on March 3, 1995, a thirty-eight-year-old man walking to his job decided to take a shortcut across eight lanes of the Tri-State Tollway. After he had made it across the four northbound lanes, the wind blew his hat back into the lanes he had just crossed. When he tried to retrieve his hat, he was struck by an eighteen-wheeler and died.

Life is strung together by choices. Like pearls on a thread, our choices are linked one to another until the strands of our lives are complete. Every time we come to a crossroads, the choice we make eliminates those we could have made, and the results are unchangeable. When we make the right choice, that’s good. But when we make the wrong choice, what’s done is done. It can be forgiven but not changed. When David was running from Saul, the people of a village that gave him assistance were later massacred by the king. David no doubt grieved the rest of his life over his choice to endanger those innocent people. If you have made a choice that led to sorrowful consequences, accept God’s forgiveness and resolve to learn from your mistake.

What’s done in life is done. But that doesn’t mean it has to be done again.

Between two evils, choose neither; between two goods, choose both.

TRYON EDWARDS