WHEN FAILURE IS THE BLESSING
His life reminds me of a heartbreaking line from the movie Memoirs of a Geisha.
The movie tells the story of two young girls sold by their poor parents who cannot afford to keep them any longer. One daughter is sold into prostitution and the other into training to be a geisha. The movie is the story retold through the eyes of the daughter sold into geisha training.
The geisha, now an older woman, narrates the story. She begins, “A story like mine should never be told.”
Soon after being sold as a geisha, the girl receives word that her only sister has escaped, never to be seen again, and both of her parents have died. The headmistress mockingly tells the girl, “We are your only family now.”
The girl, now an older woman, interjects, “At the temple, there is a poem called Loss, carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read Loss, only feel it.”
That sense of despair felt by the girl had to be what Abraham felt most of his life. He passed his wife off as his sister, not once but twice. He had a child with another woman, then sent them off to their death in the desert. He faced loneliness in his old age, comparable only to the loss he felt leaving his family in his early years.
Under no definition of the word could anyone look back upon Abraham’s life and call him blessed. Yet God did.
Success is finding favor with God, and that sometimes means we do things that God knows we’re going to fail trying.
The failures are the blessings. The lessons learned, the relationships forged, the trust with God that needs to be developed to simply stay alive, let alone persevere—these are all blessings from God.
The good things, the painful things, the boneheaded decisions we make, and the occasional glimpses of spectacular accomplishment in the eyes of the world all park themselves under the same roof called God’s divine blessings.
[continued in the book]
You can pre-order a copy of the book HERE.
This article originally appeared here.
