Finished the Torah

In the Bible in 90 Days process I just finished the Torah this evening. And that last bit of Deuteronomy has one of my favourite passages in all Scripture, the call to choose between life and death.

As I was reading tonight it struck me how important choice is in the life of faith. Really, Moses discourse is all about exhorting the people to make the right choice, even though it may not always be the easy choice. OF course those of us who know "the rest of the story" know that the choices which were made by the people of Israel wern't always the ones Moses was calling for. And I am pretty sure that at the time some of the people would insist they didn't really have the power to choose.

But really, still today we are called to make choices. And still today people insist that they have no power to choose, that they are pushed into making the choices they do, or that the choice has been taken away by forces beyond their control. In my less than humble opinion this is often nonsense, it is a way to try and avoid responsibility.

Where I have seen this play out most notably in the church is in terms of money. Everyone will insist that they "simply can not afford to give more". And for some that may be true but for many I suspect it really is "we have chosen not to be able to afford to give more". Choices. Same goes with time. We choose how we will give our time, and then we complain about being too busy. BUt it is choices. We have more power over our lives than we claim. We can choose to make the church a higher or a lower priority. We can choose to enroll our children in everything going or not (which makes a big difference in how much time and money we can "afford" for other things). WE can choose how we live our lives.

Moses (or the writer of Deuteronomy if you prefer) was right. WE have before us the choice. We can choose to put our energy, money, and time into doing those things that we find most life-giving or we can choose to spend those things where the rest of the world tells us to. Blessings and curse will follow, but in the end they may well be nothing more than reaping what we have sown.