1-3-2025

Good Morning All,

     Isaiah 41: 9b-10; “You are my servant, I have chosen you and not cast you off”; fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you.” 

    Pick and choose.  We use that phrase often.  It is a phrase that we use in a frivolous manner.  We go to the fast-food place, and we pick what we want to eat and then choose how to order it “my way.”  It seems that we pick and choose on every whim.  This makes our picking and our choosing very shallow and without much thought or plan.

    When you are choosing pizza toppings or movies to watch, being shallow isn’t that big of a deal. Yet we seem to carry this attitude over into our more personal and important areas of our lives.  We seem to have opted for choices with no concern for the consequences.

     We choose to be married and then unmarried.  We choose to love someone today but tomorrow we choose to not love someone.  Some days we choose to talk but others we choose to fight.  I think the one thing that amazes me the most is that we choose to not show respect for other people. Why can’t we talk without calling each other idiots, morons, thugs, Nazis, communists, and other names I won’t write?  When did we choose to hate? 

    For the most part, we have always elected to hate.  This fact is why so often, when we get to the end of the day, we look in the mirror and ask (or tweet or post) the question; why did I get up this morning?  Why do I go about this day only to be beaten down by the world whether the world took the form of a boss or a coworker, a spouse or a child, a teacher, or a student?  Everyone chose to dump on me and then bale on me.  The devil loves for you to think this.

    At a New Year’s Eve celebration in New Orleans, a man chose to hate. Did the devil cause that man to do what he did?  I honestly don’t know but I do know that the devil loves that it happened.  So, the question that we ask, perhaps quietly or loudly, why did God choose to just sit there?  We will never really know the answer to this.  For many, that answer is not good enough.  But God doesn’t tell us everything; He doesn’t let us know every single reason to the events of this world.  But he does tell us one thing and that one thing is what we cling to.

    God chose you to be his child.  At the end of the day (and the start and the middle) you are God’s redeemed child, and he will never forsake you.  When all the world chooses to walk all over you, God chooses to love you. The weight of the world is on our back and Jesus tells us to come to him and let him carry the load.  We don’t need to fear the worst for God promises his best; eternal life with him.

    As difficult as it is, this world and life is not all there is for us.  This time, our earthly life is but a minor spot in a life that we will live.  We need to trust God and accept his ways as true.  God has chosen you; he has chosen to give you life, hold on to that promise for that is our hope.

Dear Father in heaven, we give you thanks for the gift of life.  Father, you chose us and give us faith to choose you.  Show us the path by which we will choose to love, honor, and value one another with the love which you have for us.  In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen.          

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret