Lent 2 ~ The Only Choice

It’s the choices we make, that in the end, will define our lives.

~  Susan Branch, in Distilled Genius

I have set before you life and death,

the blessing and the curse.

Choose life, then,

that you and your descendants may live…

by loving the LORD, your God,

heeding His voice,

and holding fast to Him.   

~  Deuteronomy 30: 19 – 20

          Years ago, during some particularly tough times, I was tormented by doubt and fear. Most of the few people who were privy to what my family and I were going through at that time thought we ought to choose a particular path – because that was the right path, they insisted. Some people even quoted the Bible and God’s commandments as justification. Trouble was the road that they were so sure of just didn’t seem right to my husband and I. I prayed a lot, turning every single sign and Word over and over in my mind.

 Every time, I reached the point of comprehension, the answer was always to choose differently.

So radically differently.

          I thought I was stark mad.

          But it turned out that I wasn’t. All I had done was to choose Jesus. That made all the difference. Until today, my family and I are alive and living and thriving despite difficulties – simply because of that.

          That’s not to say my husband and I knew exactly what we were doing, knew which flight path was right. We didn’t. But we did one thing right over and over – we made many decisions on the basis of the sanctity of marriage and family. In many of the decisions of those dark, storm-tossed days, we chose to protect and to live the marriage vows we had taken and to hold tight with all our lives to the Baptismal promises we made for our children.

          We certainly paid the price for it. Yet, today, years and years from those bitter days, looking at the life we have now, it is clear that my husband and I did the right thing.

          As the author of Deuteronomy exhorted, we did indeed choose life. And we did it by choosing Jesus.

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