I have wondered, looking back over my life, what I might have been had I chosen differently. I used to think there was really only one other option, but I’m no longer so sure. I’m pretty sure I’d be dead, fairly certain I wouldn’t have the child or wife I have, and it’s very likely I would not be mourned or missed.
I don’t say that, mourning what might have been. I say that because the only decision creating any sort of demarcation in my life was the one to follow Jesus. Had I not done that, made that choice, my life would have been characterized by the enemy of all mankind. That’s pretty much the only two choices.
According to my Master, the enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy. So, that’s what I could expect from any option where I didn’t choose to follow Jesus. On the other hand, Jesus came that we might have life, and life overflowing. It’s weird, now, after saying that, to think of how often I’ve said that life sucks. How can that be true? Honestly, only death can be that bad.
Regardless of what I might have been without Jesus, I am what He does with me now. Yet, it seems that He has a real fight on His hands to use me at all. I’m a mess. I remain this impossible mixture of life and death, beauty and ugliness, pain and healing, all bound up in a fractured person of clay. Perhaps we all are. And, perhaps, we are all also aware that it’s not supposed to be that way.
The One saving my soul is Yahweh Elohim, Yeshua Messiach. He destroys and makes alive. So, Jesus came that we might have life, but He is also the One causing death. He is the Creator, but He is also the Destroyer. Only He has such power. The enemy didn’t create this universe, he didn’t make people, form the land and seas, or the heavens, or even sin. And so, whatever my Master says is truth, and however He defines terms is real meaning.
We are what He has made us to be. And we will continue being no more, nor no less, until He says we’re done. And yet we have choice. Two naked, unashamed, gardeners chose the wrong tree. And they brought us the knowledge of good and evil. The choice before me is whether or not to give it back. Life is letting go of the knowledge of good and evil, and walking with my Creator. Death is knowing good and evil for myself, walking by myself, and defining for myself, as if I truly had such power.
It’s no wonder Paul refers to death as sleep, when to be dead in my sins, apart from my Master, is to be dreaming of something unreal. When illusion is all I have, then I’m dead. But when my Master defines for me, I walk with Him in the cool of the day. There’s no point in anything else, no other experience, no other choice, no other truth or reality compares to walking with my Master.
I am what He has made me. And I live because He says so. And I choose to walk with my Master. What do you know? And what do you choose?
Knothole Theology 