Choice

Sometimes I’m tempted to think that choice does not really exist.

Until I remember Eden.

Does God know all that will be?

Do we have choice?

How much?

Does He know what we will choose?

Does He know what He will choose?

How is it that when we truly want to choose God’s will we can end up so far away in another place?

Will we ever get to choose again?

What is prophecy?

Is it what will be chosen?

Or what should be chosen?

Or what we’re heading toward unless something changes?

I wonder how often God intervenes.

How exactly does God choose?

Does His choice override ours?

How often?

How many times are our choices made by not choosing?

How do other’s choices affect what I have to choose from?

How hard does God work to bring things back to His plan?

Or does He make another way?

Or are the detours His idea in the first place?

Or did He just know about them and incorporate them into His master plan?

Does He ever change His mind?

Do a lot of things He plans just not happen because we don’t move and choose along with Him?

How many times does He prompt us to choose?

How long does He wait?

How many things flow in and out of possibility the longer He waits?

If we choose according to His will is it an act of worship?

If we think we are choosing according to His will but we were wrong is it still an act of worship?

Is everything an exercise of choosing His will or is there freedom to choose among options and still be in His will?

Does it depend on whether or not He has called us to a specific path?

Is God ever disappointed in us?

What would Ezekiel say?

Is He ever angry with us?

What would Jeremiah say?

Does He ever remove from us the blessings He has promised us?

Why did He say Jerusalem would not fall, and yet it did fall?

Does he overpower our will and our faculties and our ability to choose sometimes?
What would Nebuchadnezzar say?

Will God redeem our poor choices?

What does that look like? Undoing them?  A change in direction? A new beginning? A new creation? A new plan?

Or did He know all along that we would make wrong choices and even in our acts of disobedience or weakness or confusion does He choose to bless us even as He disciplines us?

Is the best choice to let God choose for us?

Or does a greater union exist where when we yield to God so fully and so purely He can entrust us with the freedom to choose in righteousness?

How do we enter into that?

Does He experience joy in our co-creating with Him?

Is that what it looks like when freedom and creativity and power and beauty find their full expression?

Is that what Eden was supposed to be like?

Did God open up the opportunity for sin and redemption simultaneously?

What if the tree was staked before the apple was ever picked?

I wish I had Eve’s opportunity.

Might I have chosen differently?

Of course not.  We would have all chosen the same thing that Eve did. 

Says who?

But what about Adam? What about the Snake?  What about God?

How much did their choices impact the outcome of the story?

What if they had chosen differently?

Or didn't they have choices?

What if we're the apple in the story?

I wonder what answers Moses, who never entered the Promised Land, might have to my questions.

I wonder how Samson, who bore fruit only in death might have a different perspective.

I wonder what David would have to say about choice, as he prayed God might change His mind about his baby’s death. Would he have the same view as Hezekiah?

What could Pharaoh teach us about how much choice we have over a hardened heart?

Did Peter feel like he was set up to fail? Did he ever have a choice not to deny Christ?

Can we choose differently even after a prophecy has been given?

Is there power in the mere utterance of a prophecy? 
What would Balaam say to that?
Does Joseph believe that every step was ordained or could there have been another way to the fulfillment of the prophecy?

How would Ruth understand the course her life took? Was Boaz always on the horizon or was that birthed only after she chose to follow Naomi's God?
What does it mean that Esther was Queen "for such a time as this?"

I wonder if when asked these questions, they might even disagree with each other in their answers.

Oh, but that’s silly now, isn’t it?

Or is it?

Photos by Bgrace