If I'd Known Then What I Know Now

 

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. (1 Corinthians 13:8-12 ESV).

The picture accompanying today’s devotional was taken some years ago as Mary and I traveled through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park from Gatlinburg, Tennessee, to Cherokee, North Carolina. If you’ve visited that area you recognize the signature “smoke” that gives the mountains its name. We have visited that area dozens of times over the years. It is “our place.” As I write today’s devotional I am reminded of the truth in the common lament, “If I could’ve known then what I know now.”

 

You see, we lived in North Carolina and Tennessee for a total of twelve years. Yet, we didn’t visit the mountains any more frequently then than we do now. Somehow, we just didn’t have the time. That was a foolish decision based on the thought that we’d always be in that area and still had plenty of time to take the short three hour drive to the mountains “later.” Now that “later” has come we live nearly twenty hours of drive time to the mountains we have come to love. We simply don’t get there nearly as often as we would like.

 

There might be aspects of your life that you would approach differently given your current knowledge also.  I have many more than just not visiting the Smokies as much as I’d like to dwell on! For the next few days (or weeks) I intend to write the devotionals in a way that may encourage you to deepen your relationship with God, navigate life’s challenges with faith, and discover the abundant life Jesus has promised even with the regret of missing some things in favor of other things.

 

Our reading today helps us understand that there is a progression in life that allows us to be sure that there will be a day when we will have knowledge that has been perfected in the grace of God and all our disappointments will be swept away in the glorious presence of God when we will see clearly! I pray you will find a new depth of hope in that truth!