A recent experience of a young friend of mine serves to teach a powerful principle. Courtney loves music. She plays the piano and the flute; she sings; she composes; she can do it all. Her voice has even been heard on this program more than once. She’s wonderfully talented. In a state high school solo competition she won top honors her sophomore and junior year playing the flute, and for a high school musician, the state solos are the pinnacles of achievement. To win is to be the best in the state in a highly competitive discipline.

Now it’s Courtney’s senior year. She has prepared longer and harder than ever before for her solo. Winning the state solo competition again would be a dream come true. Confident, but a little nervous, she faces the judge in the preliminaries. If she does well here, she goes to state. Now the judge gives the signal, and Courtney begins to play. But all of the sudden she makes a little mistake – then another one – then another one!

At that point the judge lowers her head and begins writing. This makes Courtney even more nervous, and she makes more mistakes – until finally her concentration is completely gone, and it’s all she can do to keep from breaking down and crying. She finishes the piece, and walks out holding back the tears and knowing in her heart that her chances of going to state are gone – permanently!

“I wouldn’t go to state,” she said, “ and I wouldn’t get a second chance.”

Well, Courtney walked home very slowly that day reliving, as we so often do, over and over those terrible mistakes that had cost her so dearly.

“Oh, how I longed for a chance to prove myself,” she said, “to show the judge I really could do it, that I really was worthy of going to state.” But there was no way – not now. Her little mistakes in a weak moment had irretrievably cost her the opportunity of a lifetime.

Well that night, as Courtney continued to ponder on the day’s events, a thought suddenly struck her. With the judge there was no second chance, but with God there always is.

“If we make a mistake in this life,” she said, “our chance to return to our Father in Heaven is not lost. We have ‘a second chance.’ We have a chance to prove ourselves to the judge of heaven that we can pass the test. It we make a mistake, we have the opportunity to make it so that it doesn’t count against us. It will be forgotten.”

As these thoughts passed through her mind, the Spirit of the Lord passed through her soul. Peace and power overshadowed the pain of the day’s disappointment. That night as she went to bed, it wasn’t the agonizing memory of failure that filled my young friend’s mind, it was a deeper love and a more profound gratitude for the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal God of ‘the second chance.’