to see who I could have been

what if when we die, we're shown not a recount of our lives, but a reel of our wasted potential?
i've seen videos, mostly in a high school youth group, that show teenagers dying in some horrific car accident, some who are Christians and some who are not. each are shown a "video" of their lives, documenting both poor and wise choices they made. the Christians, of course, go skating into heaven, while the non-Christians/poor choice makers (because Christians don't make poor choices, of course) tremble and wail, fall to their knees, and beg for forgiveness on the wrong side of the Jordan.
while i'm fairly certain there won't be a heavenly video screen at all, and Christians obviously make poor choices daily (or, like me, hourly and on-going), i've begun wondering if when i die, i'll see who i could have been, compared with who i was. perhaps a scarier video than one exhibiting my poor choices....not that those won't be countless.
i've spent so much of my life paralyzed with insecurity, laziness, bitterness, cynicism, and on and on, to be shown who i could have been could leave me wailing with the damned. and while "Grace will lead me home," it won't change the decades spent wasting away the person i was created to be.


though now that i write it, and admit that it won't change it, perhaps this Grace i speak of can draw me out of this wasted potential. or at least decrease the time spent wallowing in apathy. i've been mulling over a question as i begin preparing to apply to Mars Hill Graduate School. a question that's kind of the theme of the school: "What if i truly believed the Gospel could change the world?" now i wonder, "what if i truly believed the Gospel could change me?" a new revelation (for me).