When You Fail . . .

If your people Israel are defeated before the enemy because they have sinned against you, and they turn again and acknowledge your name and pray and plead with you in this house, then hear from heaven and forgive the sin of your people Israel and bring them again to the land that you gave to them and to their fathers. 2 Chronicles 6:24-25

It’s always a little amusing to sit at a wedding or a graduation, watching all the starry-eyed newlyweds and graduates look towards the future with nothing but unbridled optimism. Enraptured by the moment, they’ve got the world by the tail, and imagine nothing but rainbows and mountaintops. We all like to think that we’ll make it through the rest of our lives with no big struggles or painful failures, but most of us, if we’re brutally honest, know that just isn’t true. We all have struggles and if we live long enough, it’s not if we’ll fail, but rather, it’s just a matter of when we’ll fail in some way.

So, I appreciate Solomon’s perspective in today’s passage. In the narrative, as he dedicated the newly built temple, the king stood before an assembly of the people and prayed. In his prayer, he didn’t imagine success after success, but rather, he looked forward to the future pragmatically. He knew his people’s past and so, he predicted their future. His prayer was to God, but I’ve got to think it was intended for his people – When you fail and wander from God, and when you make encounter the consequences of your failure, return to God. He will forgive you and bring you home (my paraphrase).

This is a good reminder to us. We all struggle in some way. When we do, and when we become sick of the misery we’ve caused ourselves, we must remember how to get out of our failure. The problem often, is that repentance is hard. It’s painful to admit our wrongs and it’s difficult to abandon the old behaviors. It is only in doing so, however, that we may begin to turn around and climb out of our misery. We all have our own struggles, and we all fail in some way. When we do, we must remember Solomon’s advice to his people and we must return to God, who always forgives and welcomes us home with open arms.