Have you ever stared at your own life and thought: This is messy? You looked around and all you saw was squandered potential? So much good wasted, perhaps arising from some bad choices you may have made? I know the feeling, which I have shared generously in my book, Champion. However for now, let us focus attention on a guy who would easily be the baddest boy in the Bible: Samson.
Meet Samson – young, strong, handsome, overconfident, and the ladies man. He was made for greatness. But he also had a knack for trouble. He couldn’t resist a girl. His sense of humor wrecked many things, including his own wedding breakfast. He couldn’t control his temper – his anger often leading to death and destruction. He was stubborn, so he closed his ears to good advice and ended up making such dumb blunders as marrying the girl who betrayed him and got him humiliated.
Whenever I read the Samson story, recorded in the book of Judges, I see myself in the mirror: a flawed life full of mistakes and deficiencies. I remember times in which I have made choices that turned my very strengths into weaknesses, hence squandering my opportunities and nullifying my potential.
Sometimes it might seem like we have wasted our lives, having started off well, but now only hurtling forward in a rather messy state. All we seem to hold are fragments of the picture of the person we could have become, the life we could have lived.
Being imperfect or getting our lives messy – whether caused by our own mistakes or not – is hardly the problem for turmoil, challenges and obstacles are part of life. What matters are the choices we make and the attitude with which we face life:
- Are we big enough to admit our mistakes and failures?
- Are we smart enough to profit from our mistakes and failures?
- Are we strong enough to correct our mistakes?
A new acquaintance recently wrote to me: “I love spring… when everything revives, grows anew, thrives. May it be so for you in your every endeavor.” Her words reminded me that no matter how imperfect our situation might be, today is not too late to start anew, to revive our hopes and dreams, to make our life count.
©2014 David Waweru
