Choice

I’m not sure I understand all the choices I make.  Most of the time I don’t even look at them.  A decision point arrives, I make a choice, a fork in the road is chosen; next.  I’m not the only one.  I recognize the voice of the conductor on the F train, I see familiar people when I go out for a coffee, I watch familiar scenes replay themselves in New York and California.  Everywhere I go there are familiar patterns broken occasionally by the surprise.  We are creatures of habit, no matter where we find ourselves in life.
 
There are tremendous risks with the familiar.  Do we grow and experience more than the life of yesterday?  Are we open to the larger community, something beyond our familiar friends?  Will we allow others, even God to touch our lives?  Life is more than the safe zone we found ourselves in the moment that just was.
 
History is littered with communities and individuals who could not move beyond what was.  God response was blunt and to the point.  “God has assigned them their place, decreed their fate in detail.  This is permanent—generation after generation, the same old thing.”  (Isaiah 34.17)  I wonder if I am falling into the same trap; blind to my failures, ignorant of my mistakes, deaf to the cries which come as a result of my steps.
 
Today is unwritten.  Nothing says I must follow yesterday’s pattern.  I can freely choose the path I take.  God offers values, priorities, and even a Spirit to guide me.  The greatest challenge you and I have is exercising the freedom we have.  We can be compassionate or focused on our own world.  We can be merciful or seek justice, if only for everyone but ourselves.  We can be accepting or blind to the benefit of living, walking, and participating in a community.  Everything is in play.  We choose the outcome.
 
You hold the freedom, as do I.  You have this opportunity; we all do regardless of circumstances.  You and I have the key to life’s door.