Maybe all of us feel that at least some part of our life was wasted. A season when we were young that we spent unwisely or maybe it was years of chasing after fame and fortune and we look back and know it was all for nothing. Wisdom and regret can often go hand in hand, haven’t we all thought, “I wish I knew then what I know now?”

But what if we are old, maybe even at the end of our lives and we know most of that life was wasted and there is no going back to change things? What can be done?

If we feel that we wasted our lives by hurting people and destroying relationships then we should try to make amends and restore those relationships. That usually helps to some degree but then there is still the wasted years. And what about those years wasted pursuing things that turned out not to matter.  In the pursuing, maybe we ignored our family, our children and in the end we’re left with nothing. – Mark 8:36

Is there a way to make peace with wasted years or even a wasted life?

We can never go back and change our history but with God we can always move forward. With God we always have a future. The apostle Paul had the same struggle with his past, his “wasted years.” Even though he spent many years of his life as an enemy of God and tried to stamp out anything having to do with Christ, even going so far as to murder and throw people in jail he found a way to really find forgiveness for that life and to put it behind him. – Acts 8:3; Gal 1:13,23

Paul wrote that he put the past behind him, he forgot what was passed and he pressed forward to the heavenly goal. – Philippians 3:13

Another person was the thief on the cross who was being crucified next to Jesus. – Luke 23:40-43. This thief had wasted his life with criminal activity and was caught and sentenced to death and he said that he deserved it. But even though his life had been completely wasted he had a future! Jesus promised this man, this thief, an eternal future and all the thief had to do was ask Jesus for it. The thief on the cross wasted his life and still had an amazing future.

Even though the experiences of Paul and the thief may seem a little extreme to us we all have some things in common with them. First, to have a future we must not live in the past. All the regrets of a wasted life can be cleared away by the forgiveness of Jesus. The Bible says that the blood of Christ will cleanse our guilty conscience.  – Hebrews 9:14, 10:22

Secondly, just like the thief we must know it’s never too late to move forward. We always have a future with Christ.

C.L.F