What Might Have Been

Throughout my life I have had certain and varied plans for how I wanted my life to progress. When I was very little, I wanted to be a fireman and ride on a fire truck with a big nozzle that shot fire everywhere. After that, my plans seemed to alternate between being a sheriff, a farmer, a cowboy, and an “armyman”. By the time I turned sixteen, my plans were a little more definite. I planned to go to college at Hutch JuCo for the first two years where I would major in physics, during which time I would join the Air National Guard, take martial arts training, and start my own business. As most of you who know me know, I did not join the ANG or start my own business. It seems that my whole life has been like that. I make plans and goals, and some are fulfilled, while others merely remain a past thought. Lately, it has been very hard on me, as I look back at all of the things I wanted to do by this point in my life. It is partly due to a lack of drive on my, partly due to a lack of time and money, and sometimes it is due to me changing my mind or just impossible circumstances.
I once read a poem by Whittier about a romance that was not to be, and the poem ended with these lines:

God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’
Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies
Deeply buried from human eyes;
And, in the hereafter, angels may
Roll the stone from its grave away!

Proverbs 16:9:
A man’s heart plans his way,
But the LORD directs his steps.

The poem expresses a very romantic sentimentality, but it shows an error in thinking. “For of all sad words of tongue or pen,” it says “The saddest are these: 'It might have been!'” However, there is no what might have been. In God's perfect will, there is only what was, just as there is only what is and only a what will be, though we don't know what it is yet. By the grace of God, I have had great joy and heartbreak; I have had easy times and harder times; and I have had trials and growth, the last being usually at the same time,

Isaiah 64:8
“But now, O LORD,
You are our Father;
We are the clay, and You our potter;
And all we are the work of Your hand..”

Our comfort isn't to be in our accomplishments, but rather in His works. I should be content with where God has placed me. Though at times I would rather be somewhere else, like hitchhiking through some foreign country, He has placed me here for a reason (Rom. 8:28), and though I might not ever understand it in this life, it is for my best, and I can rest on that. This does not mean that I may just lazily sit back and coast through life doing as little as possible. Rather, resting on the promises of God means laboring intensely to glorify God to the best of my abilities is what I seek and desire. As it says in Colossians3:1-7:

1 If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. 2 Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. 3 For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.
5 Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, 7 in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them.

We can find our true rest only by taking His yoke upon us.