making God sorry

Today we read from 1 Samuel 15:1-16:23 in the One Year Bible. Saul disobeys what God tells him to do, and the Bible says that God is sorry he made him king.

This is puzzling, since God knew what Saul was going to do before He made him king. It makes you wonder how the space/time thing works. We do certainly have a choice in life. And maybe Saul chose poorly in THIS dimension, and God is sorry He chose him here, but in another dimension Saul chose wisely and God was glad He chose him. Maybe in yet another dimension, we never fell from grace, like in the book Perelandra. But, like CS Lewis tells us, we're not told what WOULD have happened.... or what has happened in other dimensions. We're only told what happens in this one.

So we will make mistakes, like Adam and Eve, and like Saul. And we have a choice to make once we've sinned. We can be like Peter, and confess our sin and come back to Jesus and be made into something amazing. Or we can be like Judas and hang on to our sin and our error and give in to despair.

Choose wisely.

God, thanks for forgiving us when we are like Saul and make dumb choices.