Day 226, or August the 14th. Learn from your own mistakes.
Our thoughts today come from Lamentations chapter 1 verse 18.
The LORD is righteous, yet I rebelled against His command. Listen, all you peoples! Look
on my suffering! My young men and young women have gone into exile.
And now the big picture surrounding this verse. The Book of Lamentations is generally recognized
as having been written by the prophet Jeremiah. It's a song or funeral dirge, written in
a particularly memorable format, so it could be learned and either recited or sung as a
permanent reminder of what happened to the once glorious city of Jerusalem. Beginning
each chapter with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, it progresses verse by verse
through the entire alphabet. Chapters 1, 2, 4 and 5 each have 22 verses, which is the
number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. The third chapter has 3 verses for each letter,
and therefore has 66 in total. The Book laments the destruction of Jerusalem and the subsequent
anger of God, with the central chapter being dominated by prayer from Jeremiah. It finishes
with a prayer of restoration.
And now our action step for today. Taking advice and learning from other people's
mistakes can be difficult, but learning from your own mistakes isn't always easy either.
Many of the Jews, as they were taken away into exile, must have been thinking, if only
I had learned from my mistakes before this calamity happened. If you only need to make
a mistake once before learning its lesson, you are a rare person indeed. Truly learning
lessons from your own mistakes will save us from repeating them. We parents know how disappointing
it is when our children come back to us saying, sorry, for the same old mistakes over and
over again. There is a distinct whiff of insincerity. With the Holy Spirit's help today, let's
do our best not to make the same mistakes, but rather fill those periods of time doing
good and encouraging others to do the same.