Here We Go Again

This season our youngest is playing for a new, club baseball team.  He’s excited, especially since he gets to go back for a week-long summer tournament in Cooperstown.  All of our “once-in-a-lifetime” sales pitches that we espoused during our fundraising efforts last year turns out to be a bit of an unintentional fallacy.  Oops!  The truth is, having a summer birthday enables him to play again with kids in his grade this year.  He gets a second chance to go back.  Unfortunately, things don’t always turn out like that for us.  Usually, the once-in-a-lifetime family vacations or job opportunities are just that.  You can’t let them go by, because rarely do you get a second chance to go or do it again.
 
Thankfully, this recipe for regret is not evident in our dealings with God.  The Bible is full of people who got a second chance. God is the God of second chances—and hundredth and thousandth chances!  Abraham, who is called the father of faith, pretended his wife was his sister because he didn’t have faith that God would protect him. Moses murdered someone. Jonah ran from his assignment. Rahab worked as a prostitute. David committed adultery and had the woman’s husband put to death. And yet every one of these people are in God’s “hall of fame” in Hebrews 11.
 
If you had to be perfect to receive God’s grace, no one would stand a chance!  Job got some of the best advice for recovering what has been lost in your life and returning to God’s original plan for you: “Put your heart right, Job. Reach out to God. Put away evil and wrong from your home. Then face the world again, firm and courageous. Then all your troubles will fade from your memory, like floods that are past and remembered no more. Your life will be brighter than sunshine at noon, and life’s darkest hours will shine like the dawn. You will live secure and full of hope; God will protect you and give you rest” (Job 11:13-18 GNT).
 
What an amazing promise! When we repent of our mistakes, God always offers another chance.  Of course, we hear that most weeks in our liturgy:  “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9) This is a testimony to how patient, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love our God is.  God NEVER gives up on you!  Jesus is God’s lifeline of grace, redemption and hope. In Christ and because of Him, our God loves to give second chances. He is indeed the God of a second chance. We are each so incredibly loved by our Heavenly Father.  


h/t to inspiration provided in devotional by Rick Warren, somewhere out on the web.