Choose Life

"Choose life."  This is a phrase I say all the time to the kids.  I thought I had gotten it from a parenting book by Ted Tripp called "Shepherding a Child's Heart".  He speaks about how when we are disciplining our children it is actually rescuing them from a bad life and that it is my job to do this.  The children are therefore supposed to choose life so that I don't have to always discipline them.  They should be learning from the discipline.

But then, I read today in Deuteronomy,

"See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil....Therefore CHOOSE LIFE..." (Deut. 30:19)

Turns out, it wasn't Ted who came up with the phrase, but God!

My kids have to choose life.  I have to choose life. 

But my kids will say, "It's too hard!"  or I will say, "This is too much for me!"

But Moses records the words of the Lord in response to this pathetic plea, "For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off.  It is not in heaven...neither is it beyond the sea....but the word is very near you.  It is in your mouth and in your heart so that you can do it."  (Deut. 30:30:11-14)

I love that.  My kids don't get to use any excuses and neither do I.  What God requires of me is simply not too hard for me.  I have everything I need at my disposal to accomplish what He wants me to do, on a daily basis.  I don't need to go to heaven for special help or across the sea to get what I need.  Everything I need is inside me, figuratively anyway!  I simply have to choose life.

As we continue on this journey, we continue to have little reminders of God's blessing on our life.  Recently my daughter stopped for fast food as she'd been at a job and hadn't eaten in hours and was starting to feel like she was going to be sick to her stomach if she waited to eat at home.  She pulled into a Mcdonalds and ordered her food.  When she got to the window, they said, "It's on the house."  What?!  "It's on the house," they repeated.  She drove away in absolute shock.  She was so excited to tell us the next morning (as we were all fast asleep when she got home that night).  God extended that small blessing to her, in such a practical way, that met her right where she was at.  It blessed me to hear her story.  We were all in awe.

Then, another small miracle happened this week with our bank.  We were charged a fee we were not happy about.  Isn't that what banks do?  Charge fees?  Of course, who are we to make a stink about a fee?  But RM called anyway and explained that he wasn't too happy about this particular fee for a variety of reasons, never expecting them to do anything about it, but for some reason they listened to him and said they would get back to him by the end of the day if there was something they could do about it.  Shockingly, at the end of the day, they called to say they had reversed the charge.  I was there when he took the call, "What?!  he said out loud.  "I can't believe it!  Thank you so much!"  Very unbank-like, wouldn't you say?  It was a small thing, but once again...God's goodness to us we felt...another little nation...little by little......

While I'm on the topic of making a stink....We even had an answer to prayer with our septic system. :) We were pretty sure that it was on its way out.  This week we called in a guy to pump out our uh, waste.  The average house needs to call him in every 3 years.  With us, as there are so many of us, it turns out we need to bring a guy in a lot more often.  It might be as simple as that.  By simply pumping it out more often our septic bed should be fine, Lord willing.  This could be another miracle as replacing a septic system is thousands of dollars.  We trust God even with a stinky situation like this!

I think that is how you choose life, by trusting God, from the big things to the small things, to even the stinky things. The last part of the "Choose Life" verse is perfect, "Therefore, choose life that you and your offspring might live, loving the Lord your God, obeying His voice, and holding fast to Him, for He is your life and length of days..." (Deut. 30:19

As I choose life, I live!  As I choose life and hold fast to Him, I find out He is my life!  He makes sense of my life!  My length of days has meaning!  It all ties together.