Micro-Choices

Sometimes, choosing a blog topic for the week takes an extra bit of reading the Scriptures, meditating on an idea or just plain stretching the grey matter to arrive at a decision.  But occasionally there are seeming pointers throughout the week that keep reminding me of a certain theme.  You may think “coincidence,” but I’ve learned over time that God has a way of bringing my attention to a subject by dropping it on me from various seemingly unrelated sources.  When that happens I know it deserves my special attention, so here’s the latest one…

At church we are hearing a sermon series on the topic of choices.  The focus has been on those key decisions in life such as choice of career, life mate and, most important of all, life master, that is, who will we choose to serve, ourselves or the Lord.

Yesterday, we looked at how we as followers of Jesus can and should choose to respond in love and gratitude (instead of hatred and bitterness), even to evil that is done to us and to hardships in life that have happened to us totally beyond our control, where we had no choice.  One of the conclusions presented was that we are the sum total of all the choices we have made.  Makes sense.

Saturday, at lunch we read a devotional in Max Lucado’s Grace for the Moment, Vol II.  In it he talked about how we all have made bad choices in life, some that we would give almost anything to go back and undo, but we can’t.  However, he quickly pointed out that we can make one right choice that will more than make up for the losses endured from all the wrong ones.  That is by making the choice of where we will spend eternity.

Saturday night, I picked up a book that Sherril had bought earlier that day and began to read.  Before I had finished the first chapter…there it was again.  The book, 90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper, is the amazing story of a pastor who was pronounced dead in an accident with an 18 wheeler but lived to tell of his experience in Heaven.

The accident happened as he was driving home from a meeting in another city.  He could have traveled over either of two routes, but had made a choice to travel on this particular one.  A very small choice, but major consequences.  Yet, who can say that this was the wrong choice as God had a special work he planned to accomplish through this event.

This last reminder of the “choices” topic seemed to resonate more with my thoughts earlier in the week.  Wednesday, I believe, during my time of personal Bible reading and prayer I had begun to consider the impact of little choices, I’d even call them micro-choices.

Much has been preached and written about making the big choices in life, and rightly so as these will forge the whole direction, purpose, value and witness of our lives.  But in a more subtle way, the sum total of our micro-choices could have a great deal to do with the person we are becoming.

For example, just before I was about to begin my personal devotional time Wednesday morning, I remembered something I needed to do.  It was not significant, but I chose to do it.  And then, I thought of one more quick task I should do while I was up. 

When I finally got started, I suddenly realized that I had just made two brief choices that had delayed my daily appointment with the Lord.  Because they were small choices I hadn’t really thought too much about their consequences.  But they were not my top priority and now I began to realize that many small choices create a pattern and patterns develop into character traits. 

Perhaps you are the opposite of me, and you tend to take action first in response to every situation rather than meditating on it or getting distracted.  In either case, or whatever your pattern of decision making about small things may be, it is worth taking an inward look. 

Shouldn't we carefully monitor our micro-choices, because they are so subtle, to be sure they are as much under the lordship of Christ as the major life decisions that we may have already made?  A good place to begin is with a check up on our thought life, as Paul urges the Christians at Philippi:

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things. -- Phil. 4:8