Lost Choices

Have you ever lost a choice?

I had a bit of a drive yesterday, about 7.5 hours or so. It took us 8.5, well because we have a four year old and she needs some play time here and there. While we were driving I was listening to an audio book called “The Lost Choice.” It is an interesting fictional take on different accounts of history. There are these relics that seem to be helping people accomplish great things. One that has inscribed on it, “By your hand the people will be fed.” It just so happens that George Washington Carver had this relic throughout his life as he discovered the uses for peanuts and helped Gandhi feed India. The real point of the book is; the choice of the individual is what is required for any of these things to really happen. Carver would ask a person before he put the relic around their necks, “Will you commit to do something significant with your life?” If the choice to do the good thing is not made then it is considered “a lost choice.”

In Gen 16 Hagar runs a way from Sarai who has mistreated her, whatever that means, and God comes to her in the desert. He tells her of the son who is in her womb. While he does promise her that from him will come a great nation, the actual life of the son doesn’t sound like that much of a picnic. He will be like a wild donkey, he will be against everyone, and everyone will be against him. Many historicists have traced his line and the line of Isaac to the fighting that is still going on in the Middle East today.

Sometimes it seems that God gives great promises about the lives of those he is predicting. And other times it seems as though he is just telling the future and what will happen in the life of that person. God knows the end from the beginning. So he knows what a certain person will do in their lives. He also gives us free will so what happens in our lives might be according to his will or it might not. So the wild antagonistic life of Ishmael has more to do with his choices than with God’s promise or prediction. God is simply telling Hagar how it will be based on the choices that he can see Ishmael making.

What would God have to say about my life? He can see where it is going as well. So what will my choices lead to? If I had a relic hanging around my neck that said, “by your hand the people will be fed, or free, or saved.” Would they really?

Hagar calls God in this passage, “The God who sees.” What does he see for my life? What does he see for yours? Whatever it is it depends on our choices. So what will we choose today? Will we choose to do something significant in our lives and will it be for the good or for evil? Will our lives move forward the will of God or will God do a lot of correcting and plan b’s because of the choices that we make?

I am not perfect and I’m guessing neither are you, so I thank God for plan b’s. But I also want to choose today to live according to God’s plan. By his spirit and his will moving in my life I pray my choices for today will not be lost ones. What about you?