No Regrets

As I wrap up this season of reflecting on ten years of retirement, I must say that one thing I have never had since the day I took off the preacher's robe for the farmer's blue jeans is regret.  When I got up from my knees as an about to graduate from high school boy, I was convinced that God had called me to preach.  I did not like it.  I did not want to do it.  I actually spent the better part of the year struggling with a call I did not want to choose, but the divine will prevailed and I started what amounted to a life of preaching and ministry. 

 

Once I said "Yes" to the call to preach, there was no indecision.  While I doubted many things as a young believer, the fact that God called me to preach was like bedrock.  It became a sure foundation.  There are no regrets about saying "yes" to what God was calling me to be about with the life He had given me.   Retirement came in much the same way.  I left the robe behind convinced that it was time.  It seemed that God was as much in the decision to bring that part of my life to an end as He was decades before when it began.  After ten years of standing in a different place, there is no regret. 

 

Some might declare themselves to be the master of their fate.  Others might regard life as a deliberate response to coincidence.  If any of this is true, then I have erred on the side of believing that God has a way of leading each one of us into and through the many different seasons of our life.  I cannot imagine any other option that makes sense.  The Word tells one story after another of God leading folks through so many different kind of circumstances.  It tells us we are never left alone.  It tells us that we are in God's hands from conception to our arrival home in eternity.  On that day there will surely be no regrets for a life of seeking after God.