Failing to achieve our aims, to meet other people’s hopes, or to match their success, can be disappointing.
But to dwell on our failures can keep them coming, and if others ridicule us, we open the door to discouragement, self-pity, and inferiority.
Mistakes can be embarrassing and they can shrink our confidence, but people who never make mistakes never make anything.
We can find all kinds of mistakes and failures behind successful people – not to demean their success, but to show their determination to keep those failures from having the final say.
For failures are like fertiliser. They may stink; stick too close or keep others away; but like fertiliser, they can help us to grow.
This growth comes from clarifying our aims and our timeframe, from stepping back from the failure and from revisiting past milestones or achievements.
It also helps to recall the help other folks have given us because they thought we have been worth helping, however long ago.
Not all failures are self-inflicted, for some people have shown indifference or outright opposition when we were expecting their help.
Yet we can still grow through accepting God’s grace, otherwise we give those people extra power to have their malice limit us for years afterwards.
God’s grace is built on forgiveness – forgiving ourselves and forgiving others, even if they deny any responsibility.
It never pretends that there has been no wrong, but it sets us free from blame games that lock the past around us and block our view of the future.
Unlike the filling compounds that cover any cracks before we start painting to complete any rebuilds or renovation projects, forgiveness goes way below the surface.
It provides the structural strength of God’s acceptance and opens his guidance through our past or present pain.
His guidance also helps us to let go of attitudes or actions that have produced our pain, so we may make clearer steps into the future.
This forgiveness is free, but it comes at great cost, for Jesus demonstrated it when he prayed to forgive those who had manipulated his crucifixion and who were celebrating it with ridicule and abuse.
This is forgiveness on an industrial scale, which is powered by his return from death, and we may accept it whenever we need to rise above our failures and mistakes.
For however low we go, he has gone lower – and bounced back.
Noel Mitaxa
On behalf of a church near you, inviting you to explore God’s love
