I’m glad that with God’s help I can choose to see others in a new light, and trust that God will help me to extend His grace to those who may think and look at things differently than I. That is what I am working on through my journey during this Lenten season. What are you committed to working on this season?
With that in mind, I feel compelled to share some thoughts along those lines.
Do you know that you are in control of what you choose to do in your life? Whether you are having a good day or a bad day it is your choice on how you react to it. If you are having a good day you can choose to ignore that blessing and look past it not recognizing your favor, and if you are having a bad day you can choose to not allow it to ruin your mood or make you complain about the plight of that day. It is all in how we choose to react that will dictate the return of blessings or return of cursings over our life.
We have been given free will to do as we please with our life, but we will give an answer one day to every deed, to every act and to every word that we spoke. That is why I find it important to see myself as a victor and not a victim, to see myself above only and not beneath and most importantly to choose to focus on the right things that will elevate my life and lead it down the right path that will be to my betterment and benefit in the end.
When we recognize that life is fleeting and that our days pass us by much quicker than we often realize I believe we will choose better, we will choose with purpose and we will make every effort to make every day count for our benefit. We won’t have anyone else to blame for the choices we make. We won’t have people to point at when we stand before God giving an account of our life.
The decisions of life lie within our hands. We can choose to forgive, we can choose to live healthy, we can choose to pursue the dreams and aspirations that we have had in our hearts for ages and we can choose to give thanks and praise to God for every blessing, for every intervention, for every need met and for showing us an undeserved, unmerited and unending love that reaches from everlasting to everlasting.
Let us think about the choices that we are making that will affect our whole life. If changes need to be made, let us make them now while we still have the opportunity to bless our life, to make it better than it was before so that we may be proud of how we spend our days on this earth. More importantly, make God proud with the right choices that we made that served to elevate our life and the lives of those whom we were fortunate enough to be a part of.
That is all we can hope for when we breathe our final breath; that our life made a difference and it was not spent in vain. Even if others choose to think differently than we think, or believe differently than we believe. May God help us to choose to extend grace at every opportunity, and to remember that “there, but for the grace of God, go I.”
One man tells of driving a long and lonely road, the last 65 miles of it unpaved, in order to watch Hopi Indian ceremonial dances in the state of Arizona. After the dances, he returned to his car only to find that it had a flat tire. He put on the spare and drove to the only service station on the Hopi reservation.
“Do you fix flats?” he inquired of the attendant.
“Yes,” came the answer.
“How much do you charge?” he asked.
With a twinkle in his eye, the man replied, “What difference does it make?”
This is what has been called a “Hobson’s choice.” A Hobson’s choice is a situation that forces a person to accept whatever is offered or go without.
According to Barbara Berliner (The Book of Answers), the phrase was inspired by 16th century entrepreneur Thomas Hobson, who hired out horses in strict rotation at Cambridge University. There was no choosing by the customer – it was strictly Hobson’s choice.
But most of the time we really do have a choice, and the choice we make does make a difference. We may not always believe it. We may feel as if we have no choice, but almost always there is a choice in the matter. And when we realize that most of what we do we do by choice, then we are taking control of our own lives.
Someone challenged me to try an experiment that completely changed my perspective. “For the next seven days,” he said, “eliminate the words ‘I have to’ from your vocabulary and substitute the words ‘I choose to.’ Don’t say, ‘I have to work late tonight.’ Instead, say, ‘I choose to work late.’ When you choose to do it, you take control of your life. Instead of saying, ‘I have to stay home,’ try ‘I choose to stay home.’ The way you spend your time is your choice. You set the priorities. You are responsible. You have control.”
In just seven days I was no longer saying “I have to” and I felt better about my decisions. I learned that there is very little in this life I actually HAVE to do. You and I decide to do certain things because we believe that it will be for the best. When we eliminate “I have to” from our vocabularies, we take control.
Try it for a week (after all, it’s your choice) and see what happens. I think you’ll see it’s a change for the better.
I hope this thought inspires and challenges your heart to always be decision conscious so that while you are in a moment you will have the forethought to make the right choice that will bless your life and not hinder it so that you may reach your final destination proud that you did not waver from the right path.