Missed Opportunities and the Best of All Possible Timelines

Last night I spent time with my closest friend in the US, an Iranian brother named *Reza. After the other guests had left, our conversation meandered through subjects like parenting, our own upbringings, and the fatherhood of God.

“You know,” Reza told me. “I still have the invitation letter to join the national Iranian youth soccer team.”

“You mean the national youth team? I didn’t know that.”

Reza nodded. “I was very good at soccer in high school. I played for an important regional club, where the coach was a former player for Iran’s national team. I guess the national youth team heard about me and I was recruited. But I never played for them. My father was a political activist. He had recently been jailed. And I got myself in trouble because I was quite outspoken also.”

“You mean that incident where the Iranian president came to your school?”

“Yep, that’s the one.”

Reza was a fifteen-year-old student at a good private school when the Iranian president came to visit the school and give a speech. After the speech, there was a time for questions from the students. Now, Reza has always been bold about his opinions. I’ll never forget the time I took him to hear Wayne Grudem speak and Reza (a new believer at the time) decided to lecture him on his political views in the meet and greet line. Apparently, he was already like this as a fifteen-year-old, because when it was his turn at the microphone he decided to take the Iranian president to task and hit him with a very critical line of questioning.

The president responded like a true politicain-cleric by hemming and hawing and making a comment about how the youth these days need to know their place. Nothing was made of it – that day anyway.

But of course, in an authoritarian system like Iran, a public display of defiance like this can’t go unpunished. Reza was quickly expelled from his school and every other school in the city was put on notice to reject him if he applied. He also lost his opportunity to join the national youth soccer team.

“My life could have been very different,” Reza told me as we sipped tea together. “The youth team was a feeder team for the national team. I could have ended up playing on a national level – and everything that comes with that.”

Instead, Reza and his family ended up emigrating, a long and winding journey that eventually landed him in the US, where he became a follower of Jesus.

“But you know,” Reza continued, “I’m glad for what has happened. Because of those hard experiences I got to come to to the US. And now I get to coach these local kids and share the gospel with them.”

Reza teaches at a middle school known as one of the worst in the state. But his students and colleagues love him, and he’s recently started a Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) chapter there. Students, mostly from broken homes, stay after school, play soccer, and study the Bible with Reza and another Christian colleague.

“We just don’t know how God is going to use our experiences,” Reza said, shaking his head. “Even our biggest missed opportunities.”

It’s true, Reza’s witness has already been used of God as an important part of bringing others to faith, including one of our church deacons and one of our pastors’ sons.

Reza and I are now in our mid-thirties. Already, we and our peers are beginning to look back and to wrestle with the opportunities that didn’t pan out, the might-have-beens, and the reality of where we are today versus where we thought we would be when we looked forward as bright-eyed young men. I imagine this “road not taken” dynamic only gets stronger in the coming decades.

I know theologically that every missed opportunity is ultimately for my good (Rom 8:28). But it’s always good to yet again see that truth lived out in the life of a faithful brother. Reza’s had a hard path, harder than mine by many accounts. But his practical trust, his joyful contentment in God’s sovereignty over his life, his preference for being a middle school teacher who leads bible studies over being a star player for a national soccer team, this is a good reminder for my soul.

Whatever our biggest missed opportunities have been, since God the Father knows how to give good gifts to his children, we can join the psalmist in saying the lines have fallen for us in pleasant places. Truly, we have a beautiful inheritance (Psalm 16).

Or, to paraphrase both the disciples of Jonathan Edwards and recent superhero movies, we live in the best of all possible timelines.

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* names changed for security

Photos are from Unsplash.com