CHOICES

CHOICES

Two brothers were fighting over an inheritance and asked Jesus to help. Instead he told them a story of a rich man who had accumulated so much wealth he had to build more barns to hold it all.  He sat back in satisfaction and said, “Now I have so much I can just relax and enjoy life.”  God said to him, “You fool, today your life will end and all your goods will belong to someone else.  You laid up the riches of the earth while you cared nothing for the things of God.” 

(LK:12-18-21)

That parable is uncomfortable for most people, for it is a rare person who does not acquire and save material goods.  It gives us a sense of security to have money in the bank and property we can call our own.  When calamity strikes, say a week old power outage or a year-long water shortage, earthquakes, floods or fires, our security is breached.  Then people cry out; “Oh God, what have I done to deserve this?”  God could easily answer; “What did you do to deserve your comfort and security?”

God is not in the business of reward and punishment.  When the world and its inhabitants were created, God gifted humans with something no other creature has; Free Will.  Animals march to a different drummer, so to speak, but that drummer only plays one tune.  Geese cannot decide to fly north for the winter and fish cannot decide to sun themselves on the beach. 

Humans, on the other hand, can do whatever they wish for as long as they live.  Everything that happens, with the exception of natural phenomenon like weather, is the result of free will.  Every decision a human makes affects the rest of the world.  We are responsible for our choices. The spirit of God is present in the world but does not interfere with choice.  The worst sort of gift is one where the giver sets rules for how the gift is used.  God is perfect in this as in everything else. 

When I worked in retail, I trained personnel and the thing I stressed to them was that they think about the person who came to the department after them. If they left a mess, the other worker had to clean it up.  If they took ten extra minutes for lunch, the other employees had to do their work.  Caring about how our choices affect others is the foundation for the command to love one another.

There will be a reckoning as Jesus said in his parable.  God has no problem with us building a secure home or saving for retirement.  He simply wants to be part of it. We can choose God’s way or we can ignore everything but our own desires no matter what the fallout maybe for others.  It’s up to us.  Our gratitude to God for our Free Will should show in our choices.  The rich man simply didn’t get it.  We need to take care that we do. 

Blessings,

Carol Lemelin OPA