This morning, I heard some some fantastic piano-playing advice: Learn to play through mistakes. When a person hits a wrong note on a piano, it can really throw off the music. Not only can the wrong note sour the song for the listeners, the embarrassment of having played a wrong note can stun or distract the pianist, which can cause him or her to make more mistakes. Of course, the best way to react to a piano-playing mistake isn't to go back to the beginning and start over or to stop playing, but to keep playing as though the mistake never happened. Distract the audience from the mistake you made with the beautiful music you're making now. Move on as quickly as possible, and put the memory out of your mind. Instead, focus on what you're playing now and what you will play a few measures ahead.
The analogy to repentance is clear and powerful, if a bit flawed. When we sin, it's like hitting a wrong note on a piano. It sounds bad, both to us and to anyone else who hears it. When we make such a mistake, we sometimes compound the mistake by believing that our sin is a major setback or that celestial behavior is beyond our capability. We freeze up, go back, or give up, when what we should do is push forward. God knows we're human. God knows we make mistakes; it's part of the plan. That's why a key component of God's plan is repentance.
And repentance does not mean setting ourselves back and starting our spiritual journey over from the beginning. Repentance means changing our behavior. Repentance isn't about the past. It's about the present and the future. When we sin, it's not up to us to fix the mistake. God does that part. Our job is to learn from the mistake and use that wisdom to do better going forward. That's where reality breaks from the analogy. While the pianist would do well to put the misstep out of his or her mind so it doesn't distract him or her, the sinner might do well to remember his or her sin, to remind him or her not to make the same mistake again.
Still, while remembering the past can be helpful, the key thing is to get back on track and to resume moving forward as soon as possible. Our enemy would love to have us agonize over our mistakes and live in paralysed fear of repeating them, but doing nothing is just as damning as doing evil. We need to move forward. We need to move passed our mistakes. The sooner we get back on track and put our past mistakes behind us, the better, even if we made those mistakes only a few moments ago. We still need to pray for forgiveness, but we must not let the memory of our sins hold us back or convince us to resign ourselves to continue sinning. Just as a pianist must play through it quickly when he or she makes a mistake, so too should we repent quickly when we sin. Making mistakes is inevitable. What's important is that we learn from them quickly and not let them trip us up or hold us back.
2 comments:
An encouraging and helpful post. One thing, though - " When we sin, it's not up to us to fix the mistake" To some extent it is. We should do what we can to fix or repair what we did - apologize, repay, publicly speak well of someone we slandered, etc. We cannot undo what we did and should not waste time and energy agonizing that we cannot, but there are often things we can do to make things better. Where there are, we should. And, yes, move forward being a little bit better.
Well said. Thank you for adding that.
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