Therefore Choose Life

I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live — Deuteronomy 30:19

The conversation was about food.
But it turned into the matter of the heart and the head (I believed change happened in the heart; she said it was the head – guide by logic, not emotion).

Logic. Laws. Hundreds of them — 600+ of them.
Why asparagus and red cabbage were off the table.
The difference between milk and almond beverages.

The history of our nation – master builders, builders, and us.
How he fought with Him, anger for the millions of death in his lifetime.
How they all left Him.

How she did her own search and found the way of her people.

On forgiveness, she would not be forgiven.
It cannot be, she said. How can we not have to pay?
No, but our lives do not finish; we come back to redo lifetimes of wrong, she said.

And the way out?
She called Him dead.
And I call Him life.

And the law, indeed, led to death…
Remembering M, and praying she finds Life.

Teach.

“… Let us not live uncertain of what we are,
  of where we are going.

Bear witness with our spirit that we are thy children;
And enable each one to say, ‘I know my Redeemer.’
Bless us with a growing sense of this salvation.
If already enlightened in Christ, may we see
    greater things;

If quickened, may we have more abundant life;
If renewed, let us go on from strength to strength.
Give us closer abiding in Jesus
  that we may bring forth more fruit,
    have a deeper sense of our obligations to him,
  that we may surrender all,
    have a fuller joy,
  that we may serve him more completely.
And may our faith work by love
  towards him who died,
  towards our fellow-believers,
  towards our fellow-men.”
— Valley of Vision, The Teacher

Sometimes you put something sharp in your bag, meaning to take it out later. And you forget it was there.
And time passes, and you go and reach for something else, and it cuts again.

Six years. A joy like a young boy, proudly beaming over his favorite gift and accomplishment.
And there was my answer.

The continuous need for grace and forgiveness toward our fellow man.
When it is hard, it helps to remember God’s sovereign hand over all that has passed, that ‘…but God meant it for good‘ (Genesis 50:20).
My Heavenly Father still teaches me today.