This Means Life to You

In the book of Deuteronomy (30:19) Moses says to the Israelites, “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him, for that means life to you…”

Moses was simply reminding them that God has set before them a path, a way of living that is good for us and good for others, and we are ever faced with choices.

Sometimes in talking to our girls, my wife Robbie will talk about developing faith as digging a deep well looking for water. There is a real temptation to dig a bunch of shallow wells. I’m going to try a little bit of this, and a little bit of this over here, and a little bit of this religion over here, and we’ll do this church for a little while over here, all without ever fully committing. She says: What I want is not to dig a bunch of shallow wells, but to dig one really deep well… 

The truth is, even over a lifetime we could never fully plumb the depths of our own faith tradition. There are huge reserves of spirit and guidance. Most of us have found this to be true, or we wouldn’t be calling Dial Hope or reading this message. And yet, we are ever faced with this choice, aren’t we?  

Is this faith a path that I’m going to walk? And even if it is a path I walk, how much of my heart am I actually going to give? How much of myself am I going to invest? How deep am I willing to go? Community is messy. It’s hard. People step on our toes, they rub us the wrong way. Living a life of faith can be demanding. Some days we feel like we are giving more than we are receiving…

But Moses was not wrong, was he? There is ever before us life and well-being; death and adversity, blessings and curses… It’s not a matter of if we will encounter adversity and curses. We will. The question is when we face them, how will face them?

May you and I, may we be the kind of people who continue to choose the life and the path that God has set before us. May we choose to engage and to give and grow. May we invest our hearts… And as we do, may we find, that life, blessing, grace, and hope abound. 

Let us pray: Loving and Gracious God, as we sit on the edge of this new year, strengthen us in our walk with you. Center us, heal us, ground us, and use us as instruments of your peace; through Christ, we pray. Amen.