Gold Nugget 286 - What Might Have Been
Among the saddest words ever spoken are those we utter concerning what might have been. Lost opportunities; neglected duties, mischance that was within a hair-breadth of good fortune; misunderstandings that a little candour or patience would have prevented, voices we do not listen to, but whose echoes haunt us; the joy, wealth, success, love, happiness, within our grasp, if we had not let them slip; - what a weight of meaning, depth of sadness, these put into the words, “It might have been”!
How many lives are wearing themselves out in the gloom of failure or disappointment! What countless multitudes have closed in sorrow and shame, whose whole course would have been different, if at some “parting of the ways,” perhaps in the early morning of life, they had not taken the wrong turn!
A more awful depth of meaning and pathos belongs to the closing verse of this psalm. God’s lamentation over man’s lost opportunities. We speak of what might have been and has been; God speaks of what ought to have been on men’s part, and what surely would have been on his.
The Pulpit Commentary, Psalms II p. 169, Psalms 81:13, (E. R. Condor, W. Clarkson)
Gold Nugget 286
What Might Have Been
