One of them… found a wild vine and gathered from it his lap full of wild gourds, and came and cut them up into the pot of stew, not knowing what they were.
2 kings 4:39
The Bible is full of foolish mistakes: James and John wanting to call down fire on a Samaritan village. Peter drawing his sword in the Garden of Gethsemane. The disciples rebuking little children for coming to Jesus.
The amazing thing is that God’s work continued despite these mistakes. And our lives have been filled with foolish mistakes as well.
Who does not regret some foolish thing we said? “Once those words were spoken, I couldn’t take them back.” Or perhaps you regret something you didn’t say: “If I had spoken up sooner, we would not be in this position.”
Maybe your mistake relates to money. You bought something and hardly use it. Now you need that money and wish you could have it back.
Parents often regret decisions we made in bringing up our children. We didn’t realise it at the time, but we were too harsh. We should have cut our children more slack.
For others, it’s the other way round. We gave our children more freedom than they could handle. Now there are behaviour patterns that will be hard to break.
Then there are mistakes we have made in ministry. Ronald Wallace says, “For many of us the enthusiasm of our early days… was often marred by misdirected zeal and by a way of approaching other people more likely to do harm than good… We did not know any better at the time.”
As with the student who put the poisonous plant in the stew, God’s work continues despite our foolish mistakes.
Can you think of a foolish mistake you made, and how God’s work continued in spite of it? Thank God that His work does not depend on us getting everything right.
