We say it all the time. 

   "I just wish I knew what was going to happen!!"  *frustrated sigh*

   Really?  You truly believe that knowing what the future held was going to be a pleasant experience for you?  How naieve are we??  For example, it would compromise everything.  Falling in love and choosing to marry someone would never be as simple as it is.  Because if you knew that the future would hold certain conflicts and difficulties, you might change your mind and not marry that person, consequently missing out on all the spiritual growth that would come through those hard times.  Not to mention all the wonderful experiences you could have shared with that person.
  
   Or the decision to have children.  What if we knew that our pig-tailed little girl would grow up to run away from home and refuse to speak to us for the next 6 years?  What we experience now as a giddy anticipation of a bundle of joy, would turn into something more like a stressful panic of whether or not we would be able to survive those young adult years.  And if we could see the future and know we were going to lose a child long before “their time”, would we choose to have them at all?
  
   And then there's the classic, wishing you could know how long you had to live.  This, I cannot fathom.  It would taint my every, simple pleasure.  "I am hugging my child for the last time."   "This is the LAST hazelnut latte I'll ever drink!"  "Next week will be our last anniversary."   Who wants that?  I would be in a constant state of a painful countdown, and every time I was vacuuming out my car or folding laundry I would be thinking....really? I only have one life to live and I'm doing this??  It would handicap me.

    Personally, I am deeply grateful that God blesses us with the gift of ignorance.  In His mercy, He does not reveal the future and rob us of the simple joys of the present.  He doesn’t show us things that are going to be difficult to go through, before He gives the grace to actually go through them.  Because like a wise woman once said, (I think it was my sis-in-law, Amy)  “God doesn’t give us grace for our imaginations.”  And how perfectly true!  That grace isn’t there yet, and if we were to know the next 40 years, I wonder how many of us would be able to take it.

   Essentially, it would completely change the course of decisions.  I doubt I would be strong enough to willing choose to go through difficult times...and so I would always be choosing what looked to be the easiest, safest path, and I would miss out!  I would miss out on that mountain-top closeness with God that you encounter only AFTER the valley.  I would miss out on the person those trials were making me to be.  I would miss out on the thrill of victory, the relief of grace, and the joy of forgiveness.  I would miss so much.