Choose

“Choose for yourselves today whom you will serve. . . but as for me and my house, we will serve Yahweh.”

Joshua 24:15  

I love that word – choose. It is the eagle soar of free will; the crashing wave of undiscovered experience and the solemn declaration of personal responsibility and duty. To be able to choose is to finger the creases along the edges of one’s soul – that is, the expression of being made in the image of God. The will, like the intellect, sets us apart from the rest of His majestic creation.  We stand in the wake of those choices and our lives are defined by them.

 This passage at the end of the Book of Joshua was my father’s life verse. In Joshua’s invitation, I think dad found both distinction and intention in how he desired to live his own life.  Joshua’s instruction to the Israelites to love sacrificially, serve intentionally, build faithfully and stand resolutely was a declaration, from experience, that life is lived on the continuum of our choices. 

 Choose – it is a common theme in all of Scripture. It was the final admonition given by Moses to the Israelites as they stood poised to enter the promised land.

 “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, and death and calamity; in that I am commanding you today to love Yahweh your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, that you may live and multiply, and that Yahweh your God may bless you in the land where you are entering to possess it. But if your heart turns away and you will not listen, but are drawn away and worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall surely perish. You will not prolong your days in the land where you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess it. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your seed, by loving Yahweh your God, by listening to His voice, and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days, that you may live in the land which Yahweh swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”

Deuteronomy 30:15 – 20 LSB

Choose – it is the everyday reality of how we spend our treasure – the resources of time, of opportunity, of ability and of obedience.

“For we never came with a flattering word, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed⁠—God is witness⁠—nor seeking glory from men, either from you or from others, even though as apostles of Christ we could have been a burden to you. But we proved to be gentle among you, as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children. In this way, having fond affection for you, we were pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives, because you had become beloved to us. For you remember, brothers, our labor and hardship, how working night and day so as not to be a burden to any of you, we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. You are witnesses, and so is God, of how devoutly and righteously and blamelessly we behaved toward you believers;  just as you know how we were exhorting and encouraging and bearing witness to each one of you as a father would his own children, so that you would walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory.”                

1 Thessalonians 2:5 – 12 LSB

And finally, choose – it is the account we will someday give for our very lives.

For not one of us lives for himself, and not one dies for himself; for if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord; therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you again, why do you view your brother with contempt? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, to Me every knee shall bow, And every tongue shall confess to God.” 

“So then each one of us will give an account of himself to God.”

Romans 14:7 – 11 LSB

Each course I choose, I reject another. No individual gets to live a multiplicity of lives. We take a step in one direction, and we move away from the other path. We allow one thought to lead to another and soon find ourselves down a road that either blesses or entangles our souls. We spend the tick of the clock and it fades away, never to replay the same moment again.

Joshua reminds us in this clarion call that we get to choose. That reality is a reminder of God’s grace. I choose, each day, each hour, each minute to embrace or squander the gift of choice that God graciously gives. In that, even a non-choice is a choice.

In this new year, consider your choices, and recognize that our lives, yours and mine, will be built upon them.

Written by: Carol A. Jenkins (1/2023)