Two wrongs don’t make a right, but three lefts do.

With apologies to the band Relient K for slightly leveraging their album title “Two Rights don’t make a left...but three do”, I can’t help but feel there is a bit of truth to the above statement.

We have learned as children and adults the statement “two wrongs don’t make a right”. It is true and gives us a good model. Just because we have done something wrong, or someone has done something wrong to us, we aren’t entitled to do something wrong to somehow fix it or make us feel better. We are called to always do the next right thing. I feel that may be oversimplifying the situation, but if we always approached every fork in the road with the attitude, what is the right thing to do, we could strive to always do the next right thing regardless of the past or regardless of what we did to get to this particular decision. We must guard against fooling ourselves into believing what we feel is right. We must test right from wrong against what we truly know is the absolute truth, what God has called us to do, what He has clearly spelled out as right and wrong. Often times, especially with situations of infidelity, I have heard the person who left say that they felt this was the right thing. They were so wrapped up in the feelings of the moment and in their personal desires, they missed out on the absolute truths of the situation. This is where the three lefts concept comes in. We all are sinners, we all fall short by a huge chasm of what God has called us to do and the plans he has for us. But thankfully, he has a plan for redemption and a plan to fully forgive us and make us whole. There is nothing we can do to earn this, but at times, we need to be aware of his gift.

God may have intended for us to make a right turn at a particular fork. That right turn may have been to remain faithful to our spouse. We may have clearly turned left. We may have run quickly down this path. God may have even urged us again down this path to make yet another right turn to try and get us back on the correct path, we may have again ignored his quiet calling and proceeded yet again down the left path. We may have run so hard and fast in the wrong direction that we feel like there is absolutely no path back to God or to the original plan God had. The beautiful thing is that there always is. He is always there, He is always pursuing us, He always desires us. Sometimes the solution may be so simple as making a third left turn to get us back heading the direction we were supposed to have gone in the first place. It may just be that simple. The road back to what he has in mind for us may be bumpy, it may be long, we may not clearly see at first how we get down the road, but the great news is that He will always be there with us and all it takes is that first step in the right direction after making that third left. So it that case, three lefts really can make a right (and make it right), so Rejoice.

But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. Luke 15:19