Living Without Regrets By Olan Hendrix   This year marks 51 years since I began my ministry. The first ten years I served as a pastor and since then have worked in missions and other para-church organizations. In recent years I have done governance, management and development consulting for various ministries. It is quite natural that I should question my life at this stage. The questioning became intense recently when a young, very young, colleague asked if I had any regrets.   So, do I have any regrets? You would expect me to say that I wished I had prayed more, devoted myself more to the Word and been more diligent in spiritual exercises. I suspect that would be a given for any Christian. It surely is for me.   Regrets? Not about my career, my wife, my faith or any of the monumental issues that can make or break a life. The word regrets might be too strong a word. But there are changes I would make if I could.   I would have studied theology more intensely: theology, the study of God. There is no more noble pursuit for mortal man. I started too late and have performed too poorly here. I have long been devoted to the Puritans but should have read more of the church fathers. Every perplexing question and every elevating truth has been considered by great and godly minds of the past.   If I could start over I would become a better student sooner. I would have studied history, especially church history. Nothing gives a perspective on the present like an understanding of the past. I should have taken my Greek and Hebrew more seriously. I should have mastered apologetics. I wish I had paid more attention in my homiletics class. If I had known how much time I would spend in front of people I would have learned to be a better speaker.   The use of time should have been more important to me earlier in my ministry. My enemy has not been so much the bad as it has been the good, as opposed to the best. I have not been selective enough in what to leave undone. In the time I have wasted in my life, I could have learned several languages, written several books and performed many tasks that would have made a difference.   I wish I had kept in touch with more of the people I met along the way. Many were outstanding. They contributed to my life but in the press of duties I let them get away.   If I could, one of the things I would change would be the fleeting hours spent with our children. Nothing pays greater dividends than love and companionship lavished on our children in their formative years. Our oldest son, soon to turn 50, says one of his most treasured memories is of the two of us hunting deer in the woods of northern Michigan. He doesn't even mention my drilling him with The Westminster Shorter Catechism!   The only antidote I have found for the symptoms of regrets is to live well today. I can't undo the past. I can control how I live today. Discipline in the use of my time and the choices of my activities is amazingly remedial. It doesn't change the past but it makes it less intrusive into the present.   The title of this short essay is wrong. No thinking person lives without regrets. The secret is to live well in spite of regrets.   But we need not be burdened with regrets. Jesus Christ has said He will never leave us nor forsake us. And He gives us power to overcome the mistakes of the past: it's called grace.