How to Choose Life Today (Wait, You Already Did)

…I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life…
Deuteronomy 30:19

You already did it today.

When you rolled over and kissed your husband good morning. Or when you threw on that old bathrobe and trooped down the hall to feed the baby. Or when you scrambled eggs for the kids before they caught the bus. Or when you bought your co-worker a coffee on the drive to work. Or when you held the door for the person behind you as you walked into class from the freezing cold.

You chose life.

It didn’t feel like it, did it? The small stuff never does. But right there in that tired moment, that ordinary instant, that moving-on-to-the-next-thing rush, you chose life. You chose Christ.

Every day the choice is set before us a thousand times. Life or death. Good or evil. Not only in the dramatic decisions or the public protests or the election year ultimatums, but in the thousand tiny choices set before us to do good each day. To choose love. To serve others.

And it matters that you choose life.

It matters that you offer a smile when you want to sigh. It matters that you reach out to the stranger who needs help. It matters even if your contribution goes unnoticed by your boss, if your family never thanks you for folding the laundry, if your friend is too busy to return your thoughtful phone call.

It matters to the One who sets the choice before you with each new dawn. The choice between the world’s ways and God’s ways. The choice to love.

We are far from perfect, we trying ones. We do not always make the golden good choice, because we are human. (See also: sinful, tired, selfish, hurt, struggling, and stressed.) We know what it feels like when we don’t choose life. The sinking stomach, the selfish knots, the cranky mood, the lost temper, the simmering resentment. When we chose what does not give life, our choice cannot bear fruit.

But the good news is that we always get to choose again tomorrow. Today. Right now. A million more times before our head hits the pillow again tonight.

By our words, our actions, our love and our prayer, we can choose life. Even when it looks like the cross.

Because we know the glory that will rise beyond Good Friday, the brilliant upheaval of Resurrection that will burst forth again on Easter morning, the deepest mystery that is the ultimate choice for life.

The truth that God chose us.