Choice = Abortion or Calvinism

Wow, I can hardly believe I said that.

Famous picture of a surgeon doing surgery on a fetus midterm to correct a permanent disease. Incredible isn't it. I read that after the corrective surgery and before he sewed the Uterus up and re-installed it.. that the baby stuck it's hand through that hole and grabbed the surgeons finger. Ouch. Think about that one. Teacher Lantazan Franklin had a message a few years back called " is there a king in you". I still go back and listen to it regularly because it's SO uplifiting. One thing he said the last time I listened (last week) was "how many cures for diseases have not been found because we've "by our sinful choices" aborted the future generations of doctors who might have found those cures. Wow. I'd never thought of it quite that way. Maybe the best artist and or singer and or dancer and or Scientist or ..... never made it to 'breath' and life due to our choices.

Maybe the worst persons ever as well didn't arrive due to our choices.
Oh the mysteries of God, and how we will never-- ever understand them in the most nano levels. Oh, but we try, oh we try. We try to wrap our brains around how God could or couldn't do or create or choose or love or punish or give or take or sacrifice. All based around our human understandings and from our finite viewpoints. Dear God Please Dumb It Down For Us...

As a father and parent raising children, I've learned to relate much of my faith and understanding of the living Word by balancing it against my relationship with my children. I've learned that when I balance how God feels about me through His word, I filter it through how I feel and how I relate to my children and the ones I love. How my parents loved me fits in there as well.

So, for me, If I could, I'd like to save my children from everything bad and push them to everything good. I'd like to correct them on everything they say wrong and steer them into everything I know to be right. I'd like the power to make them do as I know best for their betterment and relationship with me. I'd like them to follow the rules I set and if they don't I'd like them to know they are treading on thin ice with me. I'd like them to know they really do not have a choice in any of this. I'm their dad, I created them and I know best. I raise them, give them a home and clothes and food and will through my efforts keep them close to me forever.

Well, we all grow up and leave our houses and we begin to have the choices to come home and see the folks or not. To moment by moment and day by day, live out what they taught us, or to go make choices that the world does or does not see. (we all do both).

For those in the world who are dogged by a parent or sibling or grandparent or friend from birth to seeming death who advises you everyday in life and what and how to do it correctly:) you generally learn to really dislike those people on many fronts, not love them more....

Love? Is that love, imposing your will and choices onto someone who want's to make their own.

Learning how to make good and bad choices every day is part of the incredible journey.

Boy Did David or Solomon "ever" stop making bad choices, to then write about dealing with it in repentance and then write of the joy and peace in God's mercy and grace.

On and on and over and over the Grace and mercy of God is poured out on us as we repent after we sin and make bad choices day in and day out. Little or big, God's interested in character not comfort for us. Sound like a parent to you?

So with that said. I think about "CHOICE". Do we really have it or is it a figment of our imagination. If I had the capacity to have a billion or more children of my own, what are the odds a certain percentage will make different life choices than I would desire for them. Could you or I love any of them any less. Gosh, i could cry thinking of the thought that a parent could choose one child over another based upon anything. The story of the prodical son is so powerful. God demonstrated (to me anyway) that in the natural we would think that He would love a conforming child over an exploring child.... Both are sinners, both loved the same in His eyes, but because one made more obvious bad choices that the "world" could see, well..... they will go and be destroyed. I love that God doesn't change. His love for EVERYONE remains the same. He want's us all to make the choice to come home. The Holy Spirit in a believer is "the FORCE" in you but you do have "choice" to be or not to be. To follow or not to follow. Day by day, minute by minute we make that choice. God our MOST loving father watches and waits on the sidelines during the game. COME ON SON, there is no one covering you across the middle--- make the shot, turn and catch.... awwwhhhhh. he didn't see it this time. maybe next time..... Gosh I love my kid!!!!

That's my dad, that's my father. Now on earth i don't remember my real father doing that much when I was young. Maybe I wasn't looking? hmmmm. I do know when I got to know him later in life, i realized how he always was watching and hoping i would make good choices. Rarely telling me what i should do and never telling me or forcing his will upon me. THAT would have caused problems of love and trust for sure.

I say choice again. Abortion. The catch word is "choice". Like any sin, it is choice. How many millions of women elect abortions because of fear and judgement. How many loving Christian women do this for the same reasons. Wikipedia says 45 million lives aborted since '73. Those are only the legal numbers. Do I understand why women have them? yes. Can I empathize? yes.

Did God know the millions of Christian women getting them would get them before they were in their own mothers wombs? Did He divinely stop only the ones he chose to keep for His own some day and some generation?

There I struggle.. no, actually I don't struggle. God gives us choices. to live or die. To make life in the act and to take life in the act. His lives....

To run away or to come home. To live connected as His child with His blessings, or to run and never experience them. Either way "He never stops loving us or calling us to come home and choose "Zoe" life with Him.

He loves me. He made a way for me to come back to Him and to live within His structure that creates an abundant life of peace and joy amidst the pain and struggle of life.

Jesus. What a sacrifice, what a gift to choose. He made the way, I must make the choice.

No mandatory enforcement here. No I choose you Craig but not your siblings. Rules still stay in effect while I'm living in the house. But He never will stop loving me and wanting me home if i run away. That's my Dad. He chose to create me and make a way for me to always come home. cause He loves with a love that I'll never fully understand.

Well, I look into the hurting eyes of my own children in a crisis, and there are moments when i think i begin to understand Agape. And in the same way as the Father, I pray my kids will choose to come home and tell me they love me and want me so I can show them my blessings.

We do have a choice. Choose life and life more abundantly.