Choose Life

​I believe we are faced with a daily choice to choose life. It's generally not our default setting nor is it necessarily an automatic one. The choice before us is stark: dependence on our Father will lead us into life whereas our independence will cause something inside of us to die.
 
See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, and death and adversity; in that I command you today to love the Lord 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 the Lord your God may bless you in the land where you are entering to possess it…… So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the Lord your God, by obeying 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 the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them. (Deut 30:15-20 NASB)
 
Every choice we make has consequences. In Psalm 27 the psalmist shows us the decision he makes "this is what I seek, to dwell in the house of the Lord forever" and then records for us the consequence (or blessing) of that choice "I shall look on the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living" (v 13). 
 
One of the greatest expressions of love is the gift of choice, or the freedom to make choices, some of which may be good and some not so good! Love has to give a choice otherwise it becomes controlling, manipulative and automated. Without choice, love would lack its heart; in fact, without choice love would not be love. 
 
Not only does love provide us with a choice but it also provides us with a way home. There is always the opportunity for us to return. The cords of eternal love are wrapped around us and, rather than taking us prisoner, they draw us (or woo) us back into the Father's arms and embrace. 
 
It's a choice we face, not a command. The Father places a desire in our heart and as we respond to it we discover life (and as Jesus said: Life in all its fulness).