“If you could go back in time to change one thing about your life, what would it be?”

The answers range from comic to cautionary: “I’d be better-looking.” “I’d have a smaller nose.” “I’d make a lot of money.” “I’d marry a different person.” For each of us, there’s one thing we would change to give ourselves a better story.

“I’d understand God’s love much sooner in my life,” say the truly wise among us. For them, it’s not a classic story of regret: there’s no self-loathing, guilt, or fear. What they would change is a misperception built on what the culture tells us about God instead of what the Scriptures say: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And He gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:19).

They only wish they could have known the Father’s love more deeply, for a longer time. How much the world of everyday would have been colored differently if they had known all along that “underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deut 33:27).

Give me more joy. Let me be always washed in grace. Give me more years of knowing what is really true: “God sent His Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through Him” (John 3:17).

Now stay in grace. -Bill Knott