The Choice

"You've got to play the hand you're dealt" is one of those old sayings that's truth is undeniable.  So much of life comes to us without the opportunity of choice.  You didn't get to choose your parents or where you were born.  Your skin color, your height and your looks were coded by DNA.  That cancer diagnosis wasn't something you asked for and neither was that heart murmor.  You didn't pick stuttering off the shelf, you didn't ask for dislexia and you never even saw the car coming that left you paralyzed.  Time after time, you've simply been dealt a hand that you've had to play.

Not being able to choose our circumstances in life has given rise to determinism or fatalism, the notion that we have no choice, that everything is preordained or determined in advance for us.  In religious circles, the fact that God is sovereign lends itself to the belief that man could not choose for himself for that would take away from God total self-rule.  Muslims would say that "It is as Allah wills" and Calvinists speak of God irresistable grace and preservation of the saints (that you can't resist God's call and can't alter your saved state).

However, Moses wrote, "I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.  Now choose lifee, so tht you and your children may live" (Deut 30:19).  In other words, what they could choose from (life or death; blessings or curses) was pre-determined but how they responded, which path they would take, was their choice.  Jawaharial Nehru put it this way, "Life is like a game of cards.  Tthe hand you are dealtt is determinism; the way you play it is free will."

Precisely!  You can't chose your parents but you can choose to honor and obey them.  You didn't get to choose the primary school you attended but you did get to choose your study habits and whether or not you paid attention in class (psycho/social behavioral disorders are limiting factors admittedly).  You didn't get to choose the color of your skin but you can choose to wear it proudly and strive to do your bestt and achieve the most you can regardless of pigments.

I am not saying life is equally distributed or fairly administered to all.  Quite the opposite.  I am saying that life comes at you in a way that is beyond your choice like the cards dealt in a game of Poker.  But how you play that hand, how you respond to life's circumstances is in your control.

You may be climing a steeper hill or swimming against a stronger current than the next guy butt how you climb and how you swim are up to you.  And the Good News is that you  don't havve to go it alone.  Jesus calls out to you, "Come unto me, all who are heavy burdened and  I will give you  rest.  Take my yoke upon you and  learn from me..." (Matt 11:28-29).  Jesus offers us the choice to step our of our single yolk and join him in a double yolk, where he pulls along with us.

The choice you have is how you will respond to what life throws at you.  The one response that brings ultimate victory is to choose Jesus, to go with God.  "He came to his own but his own, but his own did not receive him.  Yet to all who did receive him, those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God" (John 1:11-12).  Jus' Sayn.