THE DAY GOD SAYS “I TOLD YOU SO”

I like this Carrie Underwood song I told you so; I’ve always loved it. I’m not sure who she was singing to or the context of the song, but I kinda related it to God and humans.

Here’s what I know from the song: It’s a song about a girl who’s asking someone else (probably a guy) how he will respond to her if she came back home or came back to him after leaving or after being a “prodigal child”. She asked if he would laugh at her for being silly enough to leave in the first place and say he told her so and tell her he’s found a new person so she isn’t needed in his life again or if he would draw her close and hug her and cry with her and welcome her back and love her again.

So I thought “What if it was God?” I mean what if whenever we err and come back to God for forgiveness, He goes something like:

“I told you so

Oh, I told you so

I told you someday you’d come crawling back and asking me to take you in

I told you so

But you had to go

Now I’ve found somebody new and you will never break my heart in two again”

It just made me think of the fact that without God’s mercy and forgiveness, we are totally doomed to destruction. Imagine God laughing at you when you ask for forgiveness and He says He’s found another person to love that loves Him back as much so you gotta leave Him forever saying He won’t let you break His heart ever again. It’s easy to imagine for me because rejection isn’t such a foreign concept so I know how utterly painful it is to be denied forgiveness and acceptance and I just think “What if that was God?”

The prodigal son in the Bible would probably have gone to commit suicide if his father had said something like this to him when he went back home because he would have felt rejected, unworthy, ashamed of himself and totally useless and the best option for him would have been death.

So first, it makes me think of how God feels whenever we reject Him and that makes me extremely careful of the things I do to Him. I don’t ever want to be rejected by a God who loves me so much even when I don’t deserve it.

Also, I think of this great and mighty unconditional love God has for us all; the kind of love that never makes Him send us further away when we stray and come back to Him but instead draws us closer, gives us a hug and says “Welcome back child”. I covet that kind of love; the kind that can look past wrongs and bear the hurt and scars of whatever wrong someone has done to me and forgive the person genuinely.

I don’t know who Carrie Underwood was singing the song to or what she meant by that song; but I know what the songs means to me. This is a subtle reminder that although I have a God who will never reject me no matter how much I err or how far I walk away, I owe Him a conscious duty to not intentionally hurt Him and to be constantly careful of what I do.

I hope it means the same for you too.

You can find the full lyrics to the song here