Choices

In 2024, for most of us, maybe all of us, there will be a lot of choices to make. I sincerely hope that you and I make the right choices, but I doubt we will, at least every time. Making a choice is kind of like driving up to a fork in the road. You must decide which way to go, left or right. Or, you decide to turn around and go back the way you came. That might be the way to go, especially if you don’t know for sure which is the right turn. Sometimes, when you get to that fork in the road, the choice is really easy because you have been to that same fork many times and you already know the right way to go. But, also sometimes, you face that same fork in the road knowing which way is the right way to go and once again you take the wrong turn knowing the negative consequences you face going down that road.

Making choices is only ever easy if we are prepared to make the right choice. And believe me, you can be as prepared as you can be and still make a wrong choice. I have done it over and over. By the way, life does not just happen and we are not just along for the ride waiting for someone else to make choices for us. Even in not making a choice, we are choosing to make a choice. Now that is heady.

I know a lot of people who live reckless lives. It appears they are always making wrong choices. They get in trouble a lot, they almost never have enough to get by, and they seem really sad and unsure most of the time. That is not fate, and it is not a matter of circumstance, it is the result of wrong choices. Some might say, “Well I can’t help it, this happened to me because. . .” You still have a choice after something happens that was unfortunate or just plain wrong. You can choose to be a victim of circumstance or you can choose to rise above it and stay on the right track or get back on the right track. The choice is always yours.

I was in a jail one time (not as a prisoner, thank God) talking to a guy who had been there for many years. He had just been in a fight and was pretty beaten up. We were talking about the choices he had made in life, especially the bad choices he had made, and he said something that has stuck with me all these years. He said, “I’m all beat up because I made a bad choice.” Why was that a significant statement? Well, you might think being in jail puts you in a predicament where you can no longer make choices. That is not true. Wherever you are in life, choices are staring you in the face all the time. On this particular occasion, I spoke to this rugged looking, foul talking, disrespectful man, and decided to try to help him make sense of what life he had left. I wanted to help him make a right choice for a change.

As we talked, he realized I didn’t have to be there having that conversation. I chose to be in that jail, at that time, with a message of hope for him. I told him it didn’t matter where he had been or what he had done, hope was still available, in fact, right on the horizon. At first, it didn’t make a bit of sense to him, but as I started sharing about my faith and where I had come from, he began to realize that the hope I was talking about was real and it was a matter of a choice I had made many years ago.

I told him how I nearly ended my own life out of frustration and almost took the lives of my infant son and wife as a result of my bad choices. I let him know that my life had not been anywhere near perfect since I decided to follow Jesus Christ, but the more I walk with him the better it gets and the more good decisions I am able to make. This dear man began to listen intently as he heard more about Jesus, his sinless life, sacrificial death, and glorious resurrection. He began to understand his dire need of a savior and how he deserved to die and go to hell but didn’t have to do that. You see, in his mind he was already making good decisions. He decided to listen, he decided not to argue, he decided not to dismiss the message. . .and finally, he decided to make the best choice he will ever make in this life. He decided to receive Jesus Christ as his own Savior and Lord. He approached God in repentance, truly sorry in his heart for the godless life he had lived to that point, and he decided he didn’t want to live that way anymore.

He made the right choice.