Are you a Sorry Person?

I had just turned around for a second to set one child down, but by the time I turned around to resume the game I was playing with them, it was too late. The other child went crashing to the ground in front of me before I could do anything. We were playing the game where I catch them as they jump from the top of the stairs into my arms. I could see in the child’s eyes as I scooped them off the floor and into my arms that they were shocked that I didn’t catch them. I felt horrible. Although the child wasn’t physically hurt, I knew it was the pain of “I trusted you and you dropped me” that I saw in their eyes. Not only did I feel horrible, but I started to think of how this could happen and what I needed to do differently if I wanted to earn their trust again. Being sorry was an understatement. I was mortified.

I’ve noticed a growing group of people in the world; that group is made up of people who are sorry a lot. They are sorry for what they said, or how they acted, or for that thing that happened to someone else -- or that they got caught. They are ‘Sorry People’. It’s rare to find people who are not sorry, but they are out there as well. I think it shows heart when people are sorry. It shows they feel bad about something. But sorry doesn’t change anything. Well, maybe I should say sorry doesn’t really change anything in the long-term.

If you want to change for the better from something that went wrong it’s going to take more. I’d like to present to you a familiar concept for the faith community, though it’s extremely rare even in the faith community to see it practiced. It’s the concept of repentance. Simply stated, it means to change one’s mind or to turn from going further in a certain direction. What may look like repentance can often be just a person feeling sorry. It can be hard to tell at first whether a person is just sorry or if they are repentant. So we just give it some time. Time allows for us to see how they sustain the actions that go into being repentant. 

Tripping your friend as they walk by you can be funny. But when that friend hurts themselves we feel bad (at least I hope we do). Saying sorry is our reaction. We learn nothing if we go right back to tripping them two days later. Repentance changes our mind about tripping our friends so much so that we keep our foot from extending itself. We change our mind about tripping being worth the risk of hurting someone we care about. We learn from our mistake by making up our mind that we don’t want to be known as Jack the Tripper (that’s a little jokey joke).

‘Sorry People’ live in a cycle of misery. They don’t understand why they keep doing what they don’t like to do, yet they only realize they don’t like to do it every time it affects them or others negatively. Prior to that, it’s almost like they forget how their sorry actions would be received. Repentance causes us to alter behavior long before we are tempted to give into that behavior. The power in repentance is that it breaks the miserable cycle. Sorry is short-term guilt. Repentance is key to long-term health and transformation from our temporary trip ups.