In his book, Go the Distance, Ed Rowell says, "There are two types of pain in life - the pain of self-discipline, which is always eased by accomplishment, and the pain of regret, which aches within us until we die."

Mikhail Kalashnikov, the 82 year-old inventor of the AK-47 assault rifle, recently told Bild, a German Newspaper that he is proud of the rifle, which can fire up to 400 rounds per minute, and is light and easy to maintain but he also told them that he had some regrets about his invention. “I would have preferred to invent something, which helps people and makes life easier for farmers. A lawnmower, for example.” Kalashnikov came up with the idea for the submachine gun while recovering from injury in World War II. The AK-47 went into production in 1947, and was adopted by the Russian military in 1949. Approximately 100 million AK-47’s have been manufactured in the last fifty years. Despite the success of his invention, Kalashnikov never earned a cent from the AK-47. All the profits went to the Russian state.

—Reuters News Service, Tuesday, July 30, 2002, Illustration by Jim L. Wilson and Jim Sandell

As I read Kalashnikov say he regrets inventing the AK-47, I know it isn’t because he wasn’t proud of how well it worked or even because he didn’t make money off of it. I believe he regrets the invention because of the amount of sorrow it’s brought into the world. The AK-47, as you probably know, is the weapon of choice of terrorist and insurgents around the world. Another lawnmower wouldn’t have made as big of an impact as the AK-47, but that’s the point—he wishes he wouldn’t have had the kind of impact on the world that he did.

2 Cor. 7:10 NIV “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.”

At the ripe old age of 89, a year before English politician Sir Leonard Woolf died, he said, “The world today and the history of the human ant hill would be exactly the same if I had played ping pong instead of sitting on committees, writing books, and producing memoranda. I have therefore to make this ignominious confession to myself and anyone who reads these words that I have in this long life, ground through 150-200,000 hours of perfectly useless work.”

-http://www.newstatesman.com/200609180058 Illustration by Jim L. Wilson and Bob Johnson

No one wants to look in the rear view mirror of their life and see regret. God gives us one opportunity to make a difference – we should make the most of it, rather than investing our lives in perfectly useless work.

Psalm 90:12 (NIV) ‘Teach us to make the most of our time, so that we may grow in wisdom.’

Singer, Chrissie Hynde, enjoyed the ultimate rock ‘n’ roll existence. She spent some of her early years on top of the music polls with the Pretenders. She lived the wild lifestyle with other rockers. When asked if she would do it all again she replied, “Definitely not.” She said, “I would get rid of a lot of the drugs and debauchery and alcohol, all the stuff that led to misery. That’s the one thing different about my story. Everyone else says, ‘I don’t regret anything.’ You know what? I regret all of it.”

Right now Hynde is choosing to talk about her guilt and regrets. She still has a choice. She can make the choice of Judas who ended his own life in despair, or the choice of Peter, who fell at the feet of Jesus and repented of his rejection of Christ outside the trial room, and served the King of kings the rest of his life. —Jim L. Wilson and Jim L Wilson and Rodger Russell

Matthew 27:5 (HCSB) So he threw the silver into the sanctuary and departed. Then he went and hanged himself.

At the same time each night, Jerry Lynn gets a loud reminder of the mistake he made 13 years ago. In 2004, the Pennsylvania man was trying to find the right spot to drill a hole for a TV cable. He had the bright idea of lowering an alarm clock, tied to a piece of string, down an air vent. He set it to go off at 7:50 p.m. hoping the alarm’s sound would help him find the right spot. The clock came off the string however, and dropped inside the wall. 13 years later the alarm clock is still ringing every day.

We can allow mistakes in our past to be as all-consuming as Jerry’s alarm clock. Or we can follow the practice of the Apostle Paul and put our mistakes behind us. —Jim L. Wilson and Rodger Russell.

Philippians 3:13 (CSB) “Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead,”