What Will You Choose?

I love the God who created tomatoes and figs and oceans and sunrises and trees draped with Spanish moss.

It is harder for me to love the God that created that serpent and that forbidden fruit. But if He created everything and nothing came into being without him (John 1:3), then He also created cancer and leprosy and polio and covid and venomous sea serpents and poisonous mushrooms.

Why?

Perhaps to give us the opportunity to choose good, to choose to obey His voice, not be forced to do so by a lack of options.

Maybe God wants us to learn and discover what is evil, what we can do to avoid it, and how to battle its consequences. Maybe He wants us to learn about microbes and germs and discover cures and preventions. It starts with recognizing and understanding the things around us.

The world, the universe, is a treasure trove of gifts yet undiscovered. God has hidden them so that we may sense the thrill of discovery when we find them. Plants that thrive in austere conditions, planets that explode millions of miles away, germs that weasel their way into our dna strands. Research into those ‘challenging’ things that God has created has taught us about the universe – weather, germs, poisons, mental disorders. We have the choice to let harmful things have their way with us or make an effort to overcome them.

I always have the choice to act in my own self-interest or to act in love, putting other’s interests ahead of my own. God gave us this option by creating a world full of decisions to be made. He wants us to make the wiser choice. He even tells us what it is.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourself. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Philippians 2:3-4.

Furthermore, God does not leave us to face these choices on our own. He’s here with us. He gave us instructions and advice, cautionary tales, and wise advisors. He sent His son to walk among us and show us how. He sent His spirit to live within us and help us choose rightly.

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. John 16:13.

God created a beautiful, awesome, amazing world, but it is also full of perils, some hidden, some obvious. He calls us to be wise as serpents and gentle as doves (Matthew 10:16) and he calls us above all else to love each other (John 15:12 and 1 John 4:7-8).

God loves us so much that He gives us the option to choose rebellion, to put ourselves before Him and others. We can ignore His guidance. We can choose to walk in darkness and fulfill our own selfish desires. We can choose to sit idle when danger appears. Or we can choose to act in love. We can choose to accept that God created things we do not like, things that harm us and others, and people who challenge and threaten us. We can choose to see these as opportunities for growth. We can look for cures and preventions. We can choose to act in love toward those who challenge us.

There is so much we have yet to discover – about this world, about each other, even about ourselves. It starts with learning about the God created all of it, about His love for us. He calls us to share this love with His world, not just the parts we like, but, in wisdom, with the parts we fear.

We have the choice. Let’s choose love today.

Love in Christ, Betsy