Choose Life

 March 19, 2024

“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. 

Now choose life, so that you and your children may live”

—Deuteronomy 30:19 

The Law had been given; the blessings accompanying obedience, and the consequences of disobedience had been spelled out. There wasn’t much wiggle room, only a decision, a choice. 

It’s the same today. We don’t follow all the rituals or even all the OT laws, but the basics of the Ten Commandments haven’t changed. Most of us know the difference between right and wrong, between judgment and grace. We can’t plead ignorance. It’s all a matter of choice. Will I choose what I know to be right, or surrender to what is wrong? 

I can’t think of a single time I sinned that I didn’t know it was wrong. Not a single time. Well, maybe when I was a kid and called another kid a name I had heard but didn’t know what it meant. But the name-calling itself I knew to be wrong. 

Choosing life isn’t always easy. It often means swimming upstream against the crowd. It often means swimming upstream against what my sinful self really wants to do. But the good news is, I always have a choice. You do, too. 

Polycarp was the last living Christian bishop to have studied at the feet of Jesus’ disciple John. He was an old man when arrested for his faith and sentenced to die. The governor asks him to deny Christ and promises that if he will, his life will be spared. But the faithful bishop answers, “Fourscore and six years have I served him, and he has never done me injury; how then can I now blaspheme my King and savior?” Polycarp made a choice that cost him his life; he was burned at the stake. You and I have choices between right and wrong, faithfulness and faithlessness, Jesus and self. Choose life!