Spilled Milk

“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.” (1 John 2:19)

What the apostle John experienced was that some people profess commitment and pledge allegiance at some point and then change their minds, abandoning all consent and choosing enmity over fidelity. How many church and denominational splits are examples of this tendancy?

There is no use crying over spilled milk. Yes, we are disappointed when relationships are lost. However satisfying they may be, not every fellowship is ordained to continue throughout our lives. “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1) There are perhaps places and fellowships which were profitable for a season and to which you should not return again. If there is no forthcoming fruit, i.e. love, where then is the purpose? Could it be that what we sometimes label as drama might often be progress, deliverance, and growth in development to move us out of harms way? Why should we cry over having been forgotten or cast away? When we have been discarded, dissipated, dropped, dumped, eighty-sixed, eliminated, forsaken, given up, godforsaken, jilted, left in the cold, left in the lurch, neglected, passed up, pigeon-holed, or rejected, just remember that God is perfect in all His ways and He is 100% sovereign. God says, “I, even I, am he that comforteth you: who art thou, that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that shall die, and of the son of man which shall be made as grass; And forgettest the LORD thy maker, that hath stretched forth the heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth; and hast feared continually every day because of the fury of the oppressor, as if he were ready to destroy? and where is the fury of the oppressor?” (Isaiah 51:12, 13) Seeming misfortune only becomes oppression in reality when the calamity outweighs the Word of God’s power in the forefront of our awareness. And so, in regards to spilled milk, as Dionne Warwick said, just walk on by.