Shade Tree Wisdom - choices 9/2/07

Remember the time in your life when you just HAD to have something. Maybe it was a pair of shoes that caught your eye, or a blouse, or an item to get for the car, or whatever. Your mom tried her best to talk you out of it, pointing out that it really wasn’t worth the money. But, you had to have it, so you bought it, and then never used it because it really wasn’t a smart buy and did not fit into your life at all.

And you finally learned, again, that there are always choices. Life would not be half as exciting if everything was written down for us, and all we needed to do was follow the plan. But the Lord made us able to choose, to select, to make such choices, The Bible is filled with such choices.

Adam & Eve made a wrong choice. Moses gave the laws to the children of Israel and asked them to follow them. Then Moses told them, “What I command is not too hard to do” because “the word is very near, it is in your mouth and in your heart so that you may obey it” Deut 30, 11.14. Joshua challenged them, “Choose you this day. . .but as for me and my house, we will serve the lord.” Josh 24,15.

And the Gospels are filled with choices. “Will ye also go away?” “Who do you say that I am”. “Who do the people say that I am?” and when they confessed, “”Thou art the Christ, the Son of God”, Christ laid this before them, “Why do you call me Lord, and do not the thing that I tell you?” Luke 6,46

Choices. Proverbs 14,12, teaches, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof is death”.

And that’s just our problem. We are free to make choices, but we also must know that we live with the result. The 19th century cleric Newman had it right, “We can believe what we choose, but we are answerable for what we choose to believe.”

So it is doubly important, eternally important, that we do choose to believe the apostle’s sermon. “Salvation is of no one else (save Jesus), There is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.”

May God bless your choice.

GPD 9/2/07