Choose Life

Thursday After Ash Wednesday

Deut 30:15-20. Psalm 1. Lk 9:22-25.

“I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore, choose life that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord, listening to His voice, and being one with Him.”

The Lenten season has a beautiful set of readings, handpicked for the occasion. Today's readings are inviting us to choose life over death.

Something we easily observe about life is that it is a remarkable composite of opposites: darkness and light, cold and hot, sour and sweet, pain and pleasure, suffering and bliss, bad and good, failure and promise, stops and starts, death and birth. While there is nothing we can do to change life’s polarities, we are remarkably free to determine on which side of those polarities we wish to live. For example, we can choose good habits over bad habits, self-responsibility over self-pity, and enthusiasm over laziness, as ways of handling our life. The choice is up to us, and we make or break our life by the choices we make.

In the reading from Deuteronomy, God speaks through Moses and offers an ultimatum: death or life; death-dealing ways of living or life-enhancing ways of living. God implores us to choose life. At first glance, we may believe there is no real choice in the matter; of course we want to choose life. But do we? We need to reflect on some of our basic attitudes. Do we tend to see the dark side of people and situations rather than the bright, faults rather than assets, setbacks rather than opportunities, something to criticize rather than praise?

Has growing up soured us so that our days are full of complaint rather than gratitude? How many of us take too much too seriously and have lost the ability to laugh at our pretensions? Let there be no doubt about it, these are life and death choices. There is a life and death choice even in the gospel reading from Luke, where Jesus encourages us to take up our cross and follow him. Taking up a cross doesn’t seem very life-enhancing, but it is. It’s important to note that Jesus doesn’t say we should lay down our crosses, or sit with them, or pass them on to others, but that we carry them with our eyes glued on the Lord. What this means is that we don’t deny our problems, or resign ourselves to them, or blame other people for them, but that we deal with them courageously in the light of the teachings of Jesus. Dealing with problems as we need to is clearly an example of a life-enhancing choice.

Among all life’s opposites and polarities, choose what enhances your life. As we are instructed in the gospel reading we need to choose life by consciously choosing to die to our false self: to our inauthenticity, falsity, ego, self-centredness, etc. We discover our true self and life by continuously dying to our false self. Lenten period is a beautiful and joyful time of giving up negativity and death-enhancing attitudes within us.

See good in people rather than evil. Hunt for the good in yourself, rather than lamenting your weaknesses and failings. Focus on the light rather than the darkness, the sweet rather than the sour, successes rather than defeats, support rather than criticism, gratefulness rather than complaint. The choice of life over death is yours to make.

(From: Entering the Lectionary, slightly modified)