New Year’s Eve How to Live With Regret
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen. In tonight’s reading from the prophet Isaiah, God teaches us how it is possible to live with regret. You might not yet be in a place where you are able to listen. God will wait. As you heard at the end of this reading, “The LORD waits to be gracious to you.” When you are finally ready to listen—that is, when you have ridden far enough “upon horses [and] swift steeds,” so to speak—God will show you the Christian faith in a whole new way. Though your cup of regret will inevitably fill, God shall not fail. He will continually pour out for you new joy and increasing benefit through the promise He speaks here: “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and trust shall be your strength.” Dear Christian friends, It almost seems pointless for me to say this, but I will say it anyway: You will end up regretting many things in your life. You will regret things done to you, but even more so, you will regret things you do. It seems pointless to say such a thing out loud because many us have already experienced so much regret in life that we do not need to be told about it. Others have not yet tasted enough regret to take seriously what I say. I say it anyway: You will end up regretting many things in your life. 1. Some of us—mostly the older ones, but not only them—some of us already have a face full of regret. We have been injured, and we have inflicted injury. We did not listen, and now we wish we had. If we knew back then the pain and regret that entwine us right now, we might have done things differently. Experience is the finest of all teachers. 2. Some of you simply do not believe me and cannot take it to heart when I warn you about regret your life. You understand the words, but their depth of meaning is lost on you. You might already some bad experiences, but regret has not yet bowled you over and laid you flat on your back. You still have horses to ride, so to speak. For your own sake—for the love of God—do not ride too far or for too long! Give your ears and bend your heart to what God is saying in tonight’s reading. In this reading, God called out to His people, but some were not yet ready to listen. “No!” they said. “We will flee upon horses” and “We will ride upon swift steeds.” If you are not yet filled with enough regret to turn and listen to the LORD your God, you may at least trust—and perhaps even pray—that He will finally knock you off your horse. You were unwilling, and you said, “We will ride upon swift steeds”; therefore your pursuers shall [likewise] be swift. [Regret will pursue you] till you are left [alone] like a flagstaff on the top of a mountain, like a [solitary] signal on hill. When people ride hard “upon swift steeds,” so to speak, that is really just their very human way of dealing with their regrets. If you keep moving fast enough, you will not have time to think about what has already happened. If you keep crashing yourself forward, you will not need to look the wreckage that spins behind you. The LORD God, the Holy One of Israel, wants you to know that your equine attempts to deal with you regret will not work. You were unwilling, and you said, “We will ride upon swift steeds”; therefore your pursuers shall [likewise] be swift. [Regret will pursue you] till you are left [alone] like a flagstaff on the top of a mountain, like a [solitary] signal on hill. Therefore, the Lord waits to be gracious to you. Regret is a horrible thing. Regret is a lonely thing. No, it is NOT absolutely necessary for your life to overflow with regret, but there is a good chance that you will saddle up and refuse to have it any other way. Many of the people sitting with you have done so before you. God is unfailingly merciful. As you heard Isaiah say, “The LORD waits to be gracious to you.” By God’s grace, your regret will deliver certain benefits to you—or at least position you to receive these benefits. When regret finally bowls you over and when the LORD God sees fit to knock you from your horse, you will end up flat upon the ground with the rest of us. God has simply knocked us off the horse first, and we, too, have landed with a painful thud. People cannot say much when the wind has been knocked out of them. Your silence will allow God to speak. For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” With these Words, God is telling you how it is possible for you to live with your regrets. With these Words, God is NOT telling you that you deal with regret by: · living differently than you once lived. Yes, it is continually necessary for each of us—even pastors—to change our ways and to treat people better than we have previously treated them. But we do not live rightly with regret by merely changing our behavior. If that were all it required, then Christian worship could be replaced by an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. · advertising your regret to everyone you know. The Pentecostals like to do that with their personal testimonies. They believe they are talking about God, but they really end up just talking about themselves. (It seems that you are not a good Pentecostal unless you have horror stories to tell about your life.) For them, regret gains a sort of celebrity appeal. · burying your regrets and refusing to admit them. In the right place and at the right time, it is good to unburden yourself to someone else, especially someone who will not use your regret against you. Honesty is refreshing, but the confession of sin and the unburdening of your regret is still not the way God has given you for dealing with regret. At least, confession is not the entire way God has given you for dealing with regret: For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” When God says here, “in returning,” He certainly includes your much-needed confession of sin and regret. But there is more: · “In returning AND REST you shall be saved.” That is to say, God wants you to deal with your regret by taking the saddle off your horse, by no longer trying to escape, by sitting still. · Even more so, “in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” When you finally become quiet, both in thought and in mouth, God speaks. “The LORD waits to be gracious to you.” God continually and eternally speaks through the preaching and the sacraments of the Church, but when you are not quiet, both in thought and in mouth, you are not able to hear. “In quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” Listening to God’s Words—written in His Scriptures, preached from His pulpit, spoken in His absolution—listening to God’s Words will calm your regrets. Larger storms than the storm in your soul have been calmed with a Word from this God. The same hands that were crucified for your forgiveness and life once stretched out over the sea and said, “Peace! Be still!” (Mark 4:39). “Peace! Be still!” That is the entire point of every Christian worship service, that the LORD God, the Holy One of Israel, the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ would say to you, “Peace! Be still!” By the miraculous power of the Words that Jesus speaks and re-speaks to you here in worship, · He stables your horse; · He assures you of your full and complete forgiveness in His blood; · He miraculously reshapes your regret into something you can live with. Thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” The peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen. _______________________________________________ Sermons mailing list [email protected] http://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
