“Choices: we always have choices”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Sunday, February 12, 2023
Deuteronomy 30:15-20 (Forward, p. 14) CEV p. 201
One of the modern pseudo-scientific theories—and a theory it is—it that life, our lives, are basically predetermined, predetermined by our ancestry, by our upbringing, or by our human DNA as it evolved and changed over the millennia. In other words, we really don’t have a choice, we really can’t be held responsible—because, because that’s the way we were made, and so we can’t help ourselves.
The Bible narrative throughout its entire length says just the opposite, that regardless of what led any one of us up to this point, there are still choices to be made, choices for which we will ultimately be held responsible. In today’s passage Moses lays out to Israel one of these choices, and put it in very stark, simple and uncompromising terms:
Choose life and success, or death and disaster. Pretty simple.
And what constitutes that first choice? Being loyal to the Lord, living the way He has told them, and obeying His laws and teachings—being faithful to Him, loving Him and doing whatever He says.
And the other choice? Disobeying the Lord and rejecting Him and bowing down to other gods and worshipping them.
Moses is quite plain about it: He tells them that only God can give them life. There are no other options.
It is quite remarkable how resistant humankind is in understanding and accepting this premise. We chase after so many other things that we somehow ‘think’ will give us life and success and happiness, and yet none of them really fit the bill. None of them satisfy, and yet, even so, we still choose to go after them. Maybe we need to listen more carefully to what Moses had to say.
Forward notes: “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity” (verse 15).
“Grief is brutal. It shakes us up and changes all the plans we had for the life we knew. It can make us question everything, even our faith in God. Some will ask: If God exists, why is there war? If God exists, why does my daughter suffer from cancer? These questions are understandable, but this verse from Deuteronomy reminds us that God is with us at all times, the highest of highs and lowest of lows.
“I know from experience that some good can come out of grief and that the sting will fade, but I can’t say those things to a hurting person. I won’t. I never have. Set before all of us are life and death, prosperity and adversity. We grieve, we heal, we keep going, all by the grace of God.”
Moving Forward: “How can you offer comfort to someone who is grieving?”
A concluding note: I think that our author for today has somewhat missed the point. God is indeed with us, with us even in adversity, but this verse does not teach this. In fact, it even lays out the possibility that some of that adversity might have been avoided, that it came about because of some of the unwise and unfortunate choices that we have made.