Whose Choice?

Did you know that God chose you? He chose to create you from eternity past because He wanted you. He wants to be in relationship with you and with me.

God is the author of all life. But He makes a distinction between human and other forms of life because He made humans in His image. We bear His likeness, though I can’t fully explain how. To some extent that is a mystery.

As an author, I would be pretty upset if someone messed with something I created. For instance, if someone destroyed my work or tried to rewrite it, I would feel cheated. That’s just my human thinking.

I wonder how God feels when we destroy His beloved creation – us?

The Bible tells us to “choose life that you and your descendants may live.” We use that verse when talking about the unborn because they are the most vulnerable of God’s creation.

I have always viewed all life as sacred, valued, treasured. All human life. From every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. Of every color and creed. Have you ever marveled at how distinct we are from one another? Millions of people with no two fingerprints alike. Not many of us look the same either except perhaps identical twins.

Only God could be that creatively distinctive. And He knows us all by name. Even those not yet born. Have you ever considered that? I find it mind-boggling and amazing.

I love holding a newborn in my arms. Their skin is so soft. They make some of the most humorous expressions. And they are utterly dependent on adults to care for them. They are also completely without choice.

As we grow older and at last have the ability to choose, we will face the challenge to choose life over and over again, and not just as it might relate to giving birth to new life.

I remember visiting my dad in the nursing home and seeing the forgotten aged sitting in the hallway waiting for someone to visit them. I wonder if anyone ever came. The aged deserve dignity and must choose life too. It can be hard to keep living when life grows impossibly difficult.

I’ve had people I know take their own lives at much younger ages. They were also faced with a decision to choose life and they chose against it. When Moses, through God’s inspiration, told the people of Israel to choose life, do we think somehow that life doesn’t include our own?

Ancient civilizations and even in some remote places today human sacrifice and child sacrifice is practiced as an accepted ritual. Do they think “choose life” doesn’t apply to the person they are planning to kill?

When I say that I’m passionately pro-life, I realized one day that I couldn’t just apply that to the unborn. Life can take us down some really troubling paths and we might wish things or think things we normally wouldn’t.

I remember a pastor who once led a series of sermons called, “When Death Seems Better Than Life.” He talked about the many people in Scripture who wanted to die.

To name a few – after losing everything, Job wished he’d never been born. God showed him a different perspective. Elijah thought life was of no more value because he felt so alone. God told him he wasn’t. Jonah grew really angry and wanted to die. God questioned the wisdom of his anger.

So when we talk about the sanctity of life, people with a biblical worldview mean that all human life holds intrinsic value. And we did not choose to create that life.

God did.

God chose to create life and He chose the womb of a woman for that life to be knit together and formed in secret.

I wonder if angels sing when a new life enters the world. I imagine that God smiles on each new innocent face, no matter how scrawny, wrinkled (I was rather wrinkly at birth), how big, how hairy, how light, how dark…in beauty God has made us all.

In love He gave us the breath of life. And in love He wants to walk with us through each facet of that life until one day He calls us to His side again. But that choice, to walk with Him and love Him in return He gives to us.

Our lives matter to God at every stage through which we live. From conception to the grave, throughout every decade He grants us breath, we are His choice. His creation.

I am passionately pro-life, but I will say it again. I believe all human life, from the womb to the grave bears the stamp of God’s image and deserves our grace and mercy and protection and forgiveness and love.

God made you. He made me. Let’s not forget that when we talk about issues that are a matter of life and death. We were not given the right by God to end His human creations at any stage of life. He reserves that decision for Himself.

One day when I stand before Him, I hope He will say He saw compassion in my life for those who have no voice to speak for themselves. And I also hope He sees compassion for those who don’t see life the way I do.

The battle for a life lived for and with God is life long. We will face choice after choice to give up, to make decisions we may later regret, or to choose the blessing He offers when He gave us choice in the first place.

Ultimately God chose to give us choice. Don’t ask me to explain that paradox. My prayer is that I always make the choices that please Him and that everyone I know might know and love Him too.

~Selah

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