Romans 8:28

Mike Rimmer

In the film 17 Again, the character Mike O'Donnell is in his late thirties and his life is going nowhere. He feels that it all went wrong on a fateful night back in High School when he threw away the opportunity to pursue a career in basketball in order to marry his pregant girlfriend. But now, stuck in a rut, he questions where his life is going and blames it all on his wife. They're divorcing, his kids are turning wild and he's just been sacked from his job.

Suddenly, through some kind of undefined mystical experience, he is given the opportunity to be 17 again and attend the same high school that his kids go to. And through different circumstances, he is brought to an identical place and faced with the same choices again.

How many of us wouldn't like to go back in time and relive the choices that we made when we were younger now that we have the wisdom of hindsight? It is very easy to live in the past and wonder "what if?"

What if I could wipe tha slate clean and start again? What if I hadn't done something dumb? For many people, the pressures of life can wear us down so that we end up feeling stuck in a rut. There's a Bruce Springsteen song called "Glory Days" which tells the stories of some of Bruce's High School buddies whose best days were when they were younger and who have now been worn down by the mundane realiities of life. All they have left is to look back at their glory days and live in the past.

The first time I heard the song on the radio, I remember it moved me to tears. Here were people stuck in the past feeling that their best days were behind them. The idea made me sad. Most of us live unremarkable lives. We won't make a major impact on the world at large but we have the opportunity to make a difference to our small circle of friends and colleagues, neighbours and acquaintances. Most of life is very ordinary and it's up to us to make it extraordinary.

The reality is that it is only in films that we get the chance to go back and fix things. Everything that we are right now is the result of the choices that we made in the past. Admittedly some of us suffer at the hands of others but even there, we have a choice of how we respond to the pain inflicted on us.

You cannot go back and change the past but you can change how you live your life today. In the middle of an ordinary life, it is possible to embrace something deeper that brings meaning to our existence. Instead of feeling like the best days are behind, it's possible to find a relationship with God that transforms ordinary days into something deeper.

Where we have made mistakes, it is possible for God to work in our lives, heal the hurts and move us forwards. Where we have blown it, we can discover that God is the God of the second chance, the third chance and more. There is always hope, there is always a future, there are always possibilities of God working wonderfully turning things around for us. But it is up to us to embrace the possibilities.

We cannot go back and remake those past choices but we can acknowledge that God uses everything to shape and mould us into the person He wants us to be, if we co-operate with Him. Sometimes it's the bad stuff, the difficult times and the mistakes that have the deepest impact on us. It's how we respond when things go wrong that makes the difference.

One of my favourite verses in the Bible is Romans 8:28 which says, "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."

It means that if we love God with everything that we have and we decide to throw our lives into achieving His purpose for the world and for us, then we can expect that when things go wrong, somehow he will work those circumstances around and good will come out of them. Sometimes, we might not see that good for a long time but we can know that it will come.

We can also know that it means that we don't have to live in the past but instead live a life where each day we live for God and find His purpose bringing true meaning to everything we do.