This weekend I was telling my 22 year old nephew that I remembered the way that his dad agonised and deliberated about choosing the best pushchair for him before he was born. It was so funny to me then to see my brother, who up to then would have been more interested in bicycles or cars, comparing the models and styles of various prams. But for him, it was important to get that consumer decision right. (It was a Baby Jogger ™ that won the day if you are interested.)
We can often feel overwhelmed by decisions. On the one hand, we want to get things right, to be wise with our finances, care for those we love (or maybe just survive) but these things can take over.
Does faith help us with decisions? Or, maybe better, can faith help us to people who make good decisions? Or does faith release us from the burden of feeling that making the right decision depends entirely on us?
Sometimes our decisions become testimonies in themselves, because of what they say about us. I was recently talking to some of the wonderful students who are part of the Chapel House Christian community about how they saw the community reaching out to others. They said that just deciding to live a different way had given them lots of opportunities to talk about faith and what was important to them when people asked them where they lived. Their friends and course mates were intrigued by their different style of student accommodation and conversation naturally followed and those who visited the house were drawn by the sense of ‘family’ between the students who lived there.
There is a very small book in the Bible that illustrates the way that human decisions interplay with God’s provision. The main characters in the book of Ruth are a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. Though they are related by marriage, they are from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, drawn together in tragedy and mutual vulnerability when all of the men in their family die. The account shows that even when the future feels extremely precarious, the faithfulness of God and the faithfulness of their human decisions lead them into a new hope-filled future.
It is interesting in the book of Ruth that when the two women arrive in Judah, the story of the faithfulness of the daughter-in-law goes before her and the townspeople are ‘stirred’ by what they hear. The witness of the faithful decision, even when it isn’t the most sensible choice, ends up paving a way for them.
I wonder what decisions I might make today that could witness to a larger truth and help me to embody it; and what might that say about where I experience love? I expect that very few of us are in the market for a pram at the moment, but what story do our other decisions tell? I want to be someone whose decisions invite questions.
Karen Turner
Respond
