One of the teachings from Richard Rohr that has stayed with me over the years is the fact that, after the age of thirty, we learn a lot more from our failures than we do from our successes. I cannot count the number of times that I’ve shared this with friends, colleagues, and people who have met with me for spiritual guidance.

It’s a truth that certainly isn’t easy to live into—as I’m learning myself right now. As I type this—before dawn on a morning in early October—there are still a dozen days left for Henry and I to sign up more people for our trip to Israel this coming January…and we still need six more people to make a commitment for there to be enough people for the trip to happen. At this point, that does not feel possible. I hate putting those words out there—making it more real, in a sense—but I’m also recognizing that I don’t know where else I would look to find people. We have done what we can to share our excitement and encourage others to join us but, for whatever reasons, this trip just has not filled.

Thus I find myself in a kind of limbo—waiting for a few more days to pass, just in case people who have said no might change their minds, or people who have one of our brochures sitting on their dining room table, where they look at it with longing while eating dinner each night, might decide that they can indeed afford the time and money to make their pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

At this point, whatever lessons God might have for us to learn in this probable failure are not yet apparent to me. I’ve pondered some possibilities, ranging from us not spending enough time on the front end, praying for more clarity about whether God really wanted us to undertake this project, to some unknown future calamity in the Holy Land that would have cancelled the trip at the last minute (which is akin to what happened the first time we tried to go—as pilgrims, not leaders—a handful of years ago).

And so I wait. I wait to see if miracles are in the offing. I wait to see if the potential of failure is sufficient for me to learn some lesson, or whether I need instead to let go, move on to other projects (of which there are many!), and await the clarity of failure’s lessons, which will probably come with a bit of time, distance, and perspective.

What is your relationship with failure? Do you seek its lessons—or have you found that its lessons find you, whether you wish it or not? Do you see God’s hand at work in the failures you’ve experienced in your life?

If you want to be part of creating that miracle for us, feel free to learn more about joining us in the Holy Land this coming January: http://biblical-journeys.com/shirin-mcarthur-and-henry-hoffman-holy-land-tour/

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