Living life with minimal regret

I've recently begun reading the book of Isaiah in my morning times alone with God, and this morning I reached chapter 5, that well known prophetic parable about a man who planted a vineyard. Despite all the time and care that he put into it, it produced only sour grapes and he was bitterly disappointed that it didn't produce the sweet harvest he had been hoping for.

Of course, the story is an allegory of God's relationship with the people of Israel - that, no matter how much love and care and kindness He showed them, they turned to idols and to evil lifestyles. God looked for justice and righteousness in His people, but He found only injustice, oppression and violence.

It's a sobering thought to be reminded that God has emotions and that it's possible for Him to experience grief and disappointment when He looks at our lives and doesn't find there what He is hoping to see. When He looks for truth in our lives and finds lies; when He looks for generosity of spirit and finds selfishness; when He looks for trust and faith, but finds worry and doubt.... What a sense of deep disappointment that must bring to the heart of God.

I found myself writing a simple prayer in my journal: "Oh, Father, I don't ever want to be a disappointment to you. Keep me sensitive to the areas where my life isn't producing the kind of fruit you would long for." A key factor of the Holy Spirit's work in our lives is that He makes us aware of the things that need changed, the things that would bring disappointment or sadness to God. The Bible calls that "conviction" and it's a precious gift because it allows us to ask forgiveness and put things right.

If you develop that thought a little further, you realise that living life with intentionality is one of the ways that we can avoid disappointment and regret - not only the sadness that we might cause to our Heavenly Father, but also the sense of remorse and regret that we might cause to ourselves.

In the post above, I wrote about "sudden endings" and how they can cause us disappointment and grief. Sudden endings rob us of the opportunity to put things right. How many times have you seen a Hollywood movie where someone dies in a plane crash or suffers some other tragedy and one of the other characters says, "I didn't even say goodbye," or, "I never told her that I loved her," or, "We had a fight this morning before he left for work." There's a particular sense of grief and disappointment that comes with "unfinished business," with the sense that things didn't end the way they should have done.

One of the ways that we can avoid this sense of regret is by "keeping short accounts" with others in our lives. If we speak unkind words to someone or lose our temper with them... let's be quick to seek them out and ask for forgiveness.

Another way to avoid regret and disappointment is by deliberately living our lives as if time were short: making wise choices about how I spend the valuable time that's left to me; making decisions today that I wouldn't be sorry about if tomorrow were to bring some kind of sudden ending across my path.

There's no way to avoid all of life's disappointments, losses or trials. There's no way to foresee the sudden endings. But we can minimise our regrets by living each day with a conscious awareness of redeeming the time, loving God and seeking to bring joy to His heart.