“And we know that in all things God works for the good . . .” – Romans 8:28
A young, ambitious banker who had recently been promoted to vice-president approached his boss, the president of the bank, and asked, “What, sir, must I do to become a successful banker like you?” “Don’t make mistakes,” his mentor fired back. The young man paused, scratching his head. “Then how, sir, do I learn to not make mistakes?” he asked wanting to know more. “By making mistakes,” said the elder statesman, grinning to himself as he whirled around and headed back to his office.
Learning the hard way, there is no form of instruction quite like it. And we have all received it in one form or another, perhaps still do from time to time. I recall going through a season in my own life early on when I was trying to start a career. Seems I couldn’t do anything right back then, clumsily saying the wrong things, or not knowing what to say at all, making stupid mistakes and bad decisions. The more I bungled the more my self-confidence slipped, and the more my self-confidence slipped the worse I bungled. Though I tried to disguise it outwardly, inwardly I felt like I was in a downward spiral. Would I ever make anything of myself, I began to doubt?
The fact that I did not quickly snap out of it as I hoped made it feel like the slump lasted longer than it actually did. Instead, it was a slow gradual climb as I seemed to bungle less often, my self-confidence slowly rising instead of slipping. At first after my career began to gain some traction I found myself embarrassed, even resentful, about that season of bungling and mistake-making. Not until it occurred to me how much I had learned from it did I grow to appreciate it. Today I find myself enormously thankful for it.
All those blunders and mistakes and bad decisions were of my own making, I always knew that. Never did I try to blame God, nor did I suspect that he was putting me through some sort of boot camp of hard knocks. Instead, God was standing by when the time was right to redeem it into something good. Learning the hard way, there is no form of instruction quite like it. The wise old bank president understood that, and perhaps why he was grinning to himself when he whirled around leaving his young mentee scratching his head. For, “we know that in all things God works for good.” Sometimes I imagine God grinning to himself back in my own bungling days, just like the old banker.