Choices

   This coming Friday I will, God willing, give a short talk to some 42 inmates at Ware State Prison. This will be as a part of the Kairos weekend for these men. This talk is also the first of several that will be given over three days time, and it sets the stage for the others that follow it, so I have given it much thought and prayer over the past weeks, looking for the right words to say.

   This search has also taken me into my own life as I reflect on choices I have made, some good and others not so much. The outline for the talk gives a statistic that each person makes around 225 choices in a normal day. Some are normal, some are one-of-a-kind, some are trivial and some earth shattering. The problem is that while we are making them, we do not realize how a particular choice will affect our lives in the future.

   I thought about this as I finished the book Seven Days in Utopia last night. A man comes to a fork in the road and makes a choice on which way to go, based on the name of the town in a certain direction. The result of the choice, one that could have been inconsequential, changes his life, but he did not know it at that time.

   How many choices do I make each day that I do not even think about? Does God know about these choices? Does He care? Does He maybe orchestrate some of these to lead me in a certain direction, or give me an encounter that I need?

   As I walk through my day, I, at least, need to realize the choices that have placed me there, and see if there is some lesson in this situation that God wants me to see. If God wants the best for me, and I believe He does, it could be good for me to look and listen.

   Too soon old and too late smart.