Choosing L'Chayim (Life)


"I am offering you life or death, blessing or curse. Choose life, then, so that you and your descendants may live" (Deuteronomy 30:19).

Since I have often heard God speaking these very words to my own heart, today's daily devotional from Henry Nouwen was a poignant reminder. (I have clipped and pasted it verbatim at the end of this blog posting)

My close friend Marian has a spiritual mentor named 'Sister Regina' who I had the privilege of speaking with on a retreat a few years ago. She said that God's will is not a tightrope; some sort of tricky and precarious wire that we walk, about to fall off at any moment. And that God doesn't sit around sadistically rubbing his hands together waiting for us to discern it. God is sovereign (His ultimate will, will be done)--but he has given us a brain, heart, free will, dreams and desires. And that he wants to partner with us in a creative way to see what we will do with the life that he has given us. That more than anything, His will for us is to choose life because that's where Jesus is ("I am the way, the truth and the life"). The Bible also says it like this: 'walk in the light.'

Sister Regina recommended an exercise that has been very helpful to me: at the end of each day, reflect back on the day, going through it chronologically and noticing what things, people, etc. brought light and life into your heart; and which ones brought darkness--and even a feeling of death. Darkness and death are extreme words, but I'm convinced you understand what I am speaking of. Then pray that God will help us to choose to fill our time with those things which bring light and life into our day and to run away from those which do not. "Go where there is life," she said. And the moment you notice that you are caught in a cloud of darkness quickly call out to God, "Lord, get me out of here!" And he will quickly be at your side to put you back on the path to life.


This is a picture at that same retreat in Denmark Spring of 2005. What a cute baby lamb--too bad God calls us sheep rather than lambs. Lambs are much cuter.

P.S. Mall massages definitely bring light.

Henry Nouwen daily devotional for August 31, 2007:

God says, "I am offering you life or death, blessing or curse. Choose life, then, so that you and your descendants may live" (Deuteronomy 30:19).

"Choose life." That's God's call for us, and there is not a moment in which we do not have to make that choice. Life and death are always before us. In our imaginations, our thoughts, our words, our gestures, our actions ... even in our nonactions. This choice for life starts in a deep interior place. Underneath very life-affirming behaviour I can still harbour death-thoughts and death-feelings. The most important question is not "Do I kill?" but "Do I carry a blessing in my heart or a curse?" The bullet that kills is only the final instrument of the hatred that began being nurtured in the heart long before the gun was picked up.