The late Steve Jobs, one of the founders of Apple, once told a group of graduate University students that…
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.”
Jobs went on to describe not his successes in building Apple, rather some of the mistakes and difficulties he encountered before his dots began to form a picture that in time emerged. One known today globally.
I don’t know about you, but I was never very good at doing “Dot the Dot”. As a child, I didn’t have much patience. Sometimes (amidst my impatience) I missed an important dot or sequence of dots; occasionally I drew in a line before realising that it was incorrect.
Mistakes happen, life happens and often all we are left with is the hope or trust that as Steve Jobs says, “…somehow the dots will connect in the future”.
One of my Gospel hero’s (if hero is the right term to use) is Peter. Peter the fisherman who left his all to follow Christ. Peter who spent three years journeying across Galilee, witnessing the Redeemer of Mistakes, reach people, touch people, forgive people.
Peter who at the point of Christ’s deepest suffering denied Him three times not even by mistake but you could argue deliberately in an attempt to save his own skin. Peter who was unable to “dot the dots”.
The beauty of Peter’s story is not really about Peter. The beauty of the Gospel lies in the person of Christ who, following His resurrection, re-commissioned Peter to a life of witness, service and no doubt some more mistakes.
Hang in there if you are facing (inverted comma’s) “mistakes”. Job’s was right you cannot always know the good that can emerge. Trust in the dots emerging, trust in yourself, trust that something will work out, trust in the one who says, “I will never leave you, nor forget you.”
Picture courtesy of @savbrown
Wee Pilgrim 