It is well to review the Page for this date in the Freshman Volume for background. We are at a point of high importance, the choices the individual must make in life. The matter is made major in Scripture. The beginning is with God’s choices. Moses repeated rather often the words: “God shall choose . . . or The Lord shall choose . . . His last words to Israel were: Choose life … The Apostle Paul noted to the Philippians that he wrestled with the matter of life and death. He would, of himself at his age, choose death – so to be with Christ. He also would choose life, because he was needed by God to serve his fellow Christians and others. We must be deeply touched by the strength and consequences of our choices as human beings, whether theists or atheists. There is something within us relating to the consequences of self-action, and the truth that we ultimately must take responsibility for ourselves as free persons.
At thirty years of age, Michael Fox, the popular actor, discovered that he had Parkinson’s disease, and it was suggested that his life was to be limited, death would come early, and he should determine how to live out in comfort whatever years remained. He was at the height of his television stardom. He was married, had children, the youngest two years of age. He fell into alcoholism, but one day awoke to make the choice to reject the negatives, and live affirmatively. During the twenty years since, at this writing, he has been a leader in raising funds, and representing the needs of persons with Parkinson’s. His wife and children became his personal focus, and they succeeded in building a family model. More than 250 million dollars have been raised putting his organization first in the world for the purpose. Twenty years, and he is going strong at 50 years of age. Not so dramatic is my own experience. I was 44 years of age when the doctor told me that I had cancer (melanoma) and should put my affairs in order. My response was: When you attend the funeral service for me, I want you to go up to the casket, if it is there, and check – because I don’t plan on going yet. I want you and God to rescue me from the grave. I won’t be dead. I went over matters with my wife, and our four children, telling them I didn’t want to hear of it again. It was a matter of prayer, and we would give any choice of it to God. I have lived since that date for more years than I lived up to that date. My next birthday is in my tenth decade (90+). During intervening years I had another major cancer (prostate) unrelated to the first. My life could not have been busier, and I would not have found greater satisfaction, love, confidence, and spiritual life. Live until your purpose is served. Life has meaning.
There is a major problem in all this. Choices are difficult to make, partly because of uncertainty of that human nature in us. It is reluctant, and partly because life is so complex that we are not sure what decisions, or what attitudes, we ought to take. Cutting through the jungle of all this complexity, I am persuaded by the experiences I have witnessed in others, as well as myself, that the routes are before us. We must choose. If we do not someone will make the choices for us, and we will never be happy for them, unless they become our own. The evidence for life is often contradictory. I read a newspaper with an excellent author writing that this must be the case, citing evidence, and making a pitch or giving it a spin. Sometimes on the same page a second author, using acceptable process, states the opposite. There is a television station that broadcasts the business of Wall Street investments each day. Often the program includes a series of experts who predict that the market will decline, while an equally acceptable group of experts predict it will rise. Which is it to be? If I am an investor I must decide – go, don’t go. And it falls to the individual as it appears that each group is sometimes right and sometimes wrong. They take contradictions for granted. They apparently see no problem in daily contradictions. Human variances in matters of faith are often taken as reason not to believe. But, human contradiction is endemic.
So it is that God calls us to choose for life, for large or small purpose. There are good people on nearly any side one may conjure as relates to political life and effective societal functioning. We can do best when educated about life, when we believe God hears prayer, when we believe and practice love, truth, service, and faith that we can be aware of being alive to the meaning of life – under God. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020