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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Laren Tan

Hindsight is Perfect

Gracious God, Heavenly Father, we bow before you at this time, especially just in remembrance of your coming, of you willingly wanting to come down here as a human being.

I pray that the words that be said will be yours.

I am not worthy and I pray that through this somehow our hearts will be changed, lives will be touched, and we will move forward throughout this day recharged and revived.

Well you can see that my talk is called Hindsight is Perfect.

I'm going to elaborate a little bit more about that, okay?

I moved to the United States when I was 8, and for the majority of my life, I've lived here in Loma Linda.

And for those that want to know, it's a 20-hour flight and costs about $1, 000.

I Went to PUC for my undergrad, then medical school here at Loma Linda, met my wife Heidi during medical school.

We stayed another 3 years for me to finish up my internal medicine training.

And then during our second year, we had our son, Nathaniel.

They're probably not because it's quiet, so it's fine.

Was blessed even further to complete another 3 more years in pulmonary and critical care fellowship at UC Davis.

During our second year there, we had our twin girls.

The Lord's definitely got a sense of humor.

We prayed for 1 more and he blessed us with 2 twin girls.

Then came back and what I feel was God was calling us back to come back to Loma Linda in 2015.

Reflecting on that journey, I can't help but praise God because it was only being by his grace that I'm able to be here standing before you.

In preparing for this talk, I felt impressed upon to explore further into the unifying theme of hindsight is perfect.

And maybe some of you may have not heard of this term or who's heard of this term, hindsight is perfect.

Maybe another way to put it is hindsight is 20-20.

So bear with me as I explain this further.

Now as we define hindsight as perfect, hind, back, or posterior, sight to being able to see or observe is perfect.

And when you combine the 2, it is often used to describe the fact that it's easy for 1 to be knowledgeable about an event that has already happened.

In the biblical sense, when we often hear about sight, it reminded me of when Jesus healed the blind man.

If you turn your Bibles, John 9, verse 6 through 7.

I put it up on there just in case those didn't, in their Bibles.

When he said these things, he spat on the ground and made clay with sliver.

And he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay.

And he said to him, go, wash in the pool of Siloam.

Took me a while to try to figure out how to say that word.

So he went and washed and came back seeing.

The beauty of this story is that God emphasized 2 things.

First, reminder of creation and using dust and clay, going back to creation.

And second, the power of perfect healing is only through God.

Being able to see is only just that, only being able to see what is in front of us.

The ability to have perfect sight or foresight into the future is beyond any human being.

So what we're left with as imperfect beings is hindsight, right?

Only being able to see what has already happened.

And because we've been able to rely back on these experiences, we're better informed, provides us with an opportunity to learn from those previous events.

How many here can think of a decision that you made where now knowing the consequences you would have changed your mind or perhaps made a different choice?

We have made mistakes And if we knew what those consequences were going to be, we would have actually done something differently.

So let me go about and share with you a testimony, and maybe another story after that, on how this actually played in my life.

So coming back in 2015, like I said, it was a dream to take our kids to national parks.

Now, I just wanna let you guys know, Heidi and I are not avid campers.

In fact, whenever we talk about camping, she talks about glamping.

And so that's the type of family that we are.

And so this time we wanted to really go to a national park.

We wanted to be able to really fully experience it, meaning we would go camping, we would actually take the kids out, we would actually go hiking, right, up and about, enjoying God's nature.

Well, the issue is that, you know, knowing about our kids, There is 3 of them and there's only 2 of us.

So we were outnumbered by children who knew the running playbook of entropy in any open space.

When we came back, we went to Oak Glen and it was foggy and it was misty and we decided, well, we would take a wonderful family photo.

The minute we got out into this misty field, they were gone in 3 separate directions.

They'll come back sooner or later, but just let them run.

Secondly also, we noticed that our children, their center of gravity wasn't really centered.

They were small, so we knew that kids have bigger heads, right?

And the fear within our minds was that we could picture this.

We'd see this serene, beautiful view, and then this cliff.

And our kids would be running to see this cliff, and they just wouldn't be able to stop.

They would just keep going because their center of gravity was off.

So our fear was that they would just fall off the cliff.

So these are the type of thoughts that would go through our minds, and we had to wait till they were actually much older.

Let alone, we still worry about this, but we feel that they can actually stop now.

So we were able to actually make the trip to Zion and Bryce Canyon.

In preparing for this trip, we decided that we would drive from Loma Linda to Utah.

And thought it'd be fun to rent a large SUV so the kids would have room and we could all pack everything that we need for this trip.

We wanted a large vehicle because like I said, the Lord has got a great sense of humor.

He blessed me with children with the voice, with vocal chords of opera singers and also the ability to out-talk any telemarketer out there.

And so when we drive, I mean, it's just constant talking and it's just loud.

Secondly, the other thing is, whenever our family packs for trips, we pack as if there's no supermarket, there's nothing nearby.

So it's as if we've got to just pack everything in there.

We're talking about, for us, it's like rice cookers, water heaters, we're talking about stoves, and then we go, but the room has a stove.

We're like, it doesn't matter, it may not work, so we gotta pack it up for the kids too.

So he would just pack everything up, and I'll say, if Heidi's here, yes she is, I am guilty of much the same thing too, I support it.

So this way it's not just me, or not just her.

But the problem really is that it isn't really putting the gear in as the big issue, it's really taking the gear out.

So what we've noticed is that whenever we park at wherever we're at, we have a lot of onlookers that marvel at how much stuff we can pack into our car or into this SUV.

And you'll see them looking and kind of giving this side look as we just start pulling stuff out.

And really, I think what they're really marveling at is how much stuff we can pack without suffocating our kids in the back.

But I see this as an opportunity during that time.

Because as they're on looking and they're looking at seeing all these things that we're packing, kind of the phrase comes out.

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Hindsight is Perfect

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