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Choices

February 15, 2024

Deuteronomy 30:15-20  |  Luke 9:18-25  |  Psalm 1

“See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity…I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days..” 

These verses from today’s assigned lesson in Deuteronomy speak of choice, as Moses admonishes the Israelites to be mindful of what God offers to them, and their options to select otherwise.  In those times, as they wandered in the wilderness, Moses urged them to look ahead to the Promised Land, and of the fulfilling of God’s covenant to His people.  Yet, even raising one’s hand to opt for Life meant other risks, struggles, heartaches, limitations and possible persecution.

Centuries later, Jesus tells His disciples, “I have come that you may have Life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10).  That’s a pretty hefty promise. Why would we choose otherwise?

Nowadays, we are confronted with so many (too many?!) choices.  Some are frivolous, some are practical, others are challenging, and certain others are life-changing.  Chocolate or vanilla?  Work from home, or go into the office?  Am I for or against? Shall I accept that offer?

One of my favorite poems through the decades has been Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” which epitomizes the perplexity and the significance of choosing:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Decades later, I ponder this poem, and the choices I’ve made, willingly and by circumstances, and I see God’s guiding hand.  A former supervisor once told me, “The best decisions are made with the heart.”  Indeed, I took her advice to my heart, and God was beside me, blessing me all the way that, in Frost’s words, was “just as fair, grassy and wanted wear.”  Jesus has certainly delivered on that promise of abundant life for me.

“And that has made all the difference.”

For those of us who knew and loved Lisa Johnson, and celebrated her life almost three weeks ago, her path was one that included all those events of life, death, adversity, blessings and curses.  She chose, and she embraced Life, – living, loving, serving God and all of us, in all of her too-short length of days.  And, we know, she had a lot of fun along the way.  What an inspiration.

As we begin our journey through Lent’s wilderness, may we consider and celebrate our choices, given to us as God’s free will, and follow the Light through the path unknown, and perhaps “not taken.” God is ever with us, loving and supporting, regardless of the choices presented before us, and promising abundant Life, all the length of our days.

Laura Sullivan