Ed, my neighbour next door, has a saying. "It's alright to talk about the mistakes of others, for they won't be mentioning them." He was quick to tell me that I shouldn't be working overnight shifts in December. "It is a mistake, as you'll mix up your days and nights. You will fall asleep on the job and while driving to and from work," Ed insisted.
Through the years, I have found it best to act as if Ed is always right. Besides, he often says that he doesn't make mistakes but a few people haven't been smart enough to know that.
I have had the opposite experience in life. More often than not, it will take me a few tries to get anything right. My track record has been about fifty - fifty. As a kid, I often had my boots on the wrong feet, had T-shirts inside out, got way too much glue on stuff, lost library books and made any number of mistakes of every kind and size.
One particular mistake I made as a child was thinking store-bought was much better than homemade. Every Christmas, my grandmother would give me a hand-knitted sweater. I was mistaken about her gift. I thought it was an awful gift. Who wanted a sweater for Christmas? I sure didn't. All my grandmother's hours of knitting a sweater for me were wasted on me. I was too foolish to understand that her gift to me was her work and time given in making the sweater. It took me a lot of years before I realized how wrong I had been about my gifts of Christmas sweaters.
What we were once so certain about, we may later realize we were blindly mistaken about.
Mistakes may go unnoticed and may be of little consequence.
They can also be like the repeated biting of a guard dog. Some mistakes won't lie down and leave us alone - they come back to hound us. Once I made a mistake driving, when I didn't see an oil tanker coming and turned out in front of it. The tanker sent my car and me flying into space and time. My car was destroyed and I was reminded of my mistake with every payment I made for a replacement car for several years.
When God gave the gift of His Son, Jesus, born at Bethlehem, few were even aware of the gift given. It was easy for people to dismiss Joseph and Mary as just two ordinary people. Most did not know Mary had found favour with God and that the child she gave birth to was to be called Jesus. The Holy Spirit had come upon her and the power of the Most High had overshadowed her. So the baby born by her would be called the Son of God.
The angel Gabriel told Mary that nothing is impossible with God. Mary believed what the Lord told her through the angel Gabriel. Shepherds also believed when an angel told them that a Saviour had been born to them, Christ, the Lord.
Some doubt that the baby born of the Virgin Mary is Christ, the Lord. Will it be a mistake that hounds them eternally? The Bible says it this way, "God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son."
