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Choose Life

Your life was given to you, just like to all other people, but if you want to become fully alive, you must choose life with all its consequences and circumstances (ups and downs). God wants you to accept your life. You are capable of choosing life when you have rejected a conspiracy with any form of death. Choose a life planned by God for the sake of its abundance. God's grace of life goes ahead of you and at the same time accompanies you on your journey. Being aware that God gives life is the first awakening , but it’s not enough. Life is given but if you want it to bear fruits in plenty you must choose life - the Word of God constantly reminds us of this truth. Never ruin your own life or the lives of those around you. Many people - like many Israelites escaping from Egypt, have not chosen life yet on their own.

 

Simone Pacot, author of Reviens a la vie (Come back to life – a book which has not been translated from French into English yet) proposeses five rules for reengagement that are consistent with key Christians principles. These apply at any stage of spiritual development but represent a secial call to the fullness of life for the bereaved.

 

Five principles of life

 

1. The choice for life

 

Here, then, I have today set before you life and prosperity, death and doom.
If you obey the commandments of the LORD, your God, which I enjoin on you today, loving him, and walking in his ways, and keeping his commandments, statutes and decrees, you will live and grow numerous, and the LORD, your God, will bless you in the land you are entering to occupy.
If, however, you turn away your hearts and will not listen, but are led astray and adore and serve other gods, I tell you now that you will certainly perish; you will not have a long life on the land which you are crossing the Jordan to enter and occupy.
I call heaven and earth today to witness against you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live,
by loving the LORD, your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him. For that will mean life for you, a long life for you to live on the land which the LORD swore he would give to your fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  Deuteronomy 30: 15-20

 

Your life has been given to you, but do not be satisfied that you are just alive. Choose life, define yourself. Choose life as it has been intended to be lived by God.

 

Judeo-Christian tradition both bids us to choose life and warns against choosing its opposite. God invites us to choose the wholesome path and to refuse to become accomplices to death in all its forms, including denial of our spiritual identity, falseness in words and deeds, and passive or active self-destruction.

 

2. Acceptence of our human conditions

 

Then Yahweh God gave the man this command, 'You are free to eat of all the trees in the garden. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you are not to eat; for, the day you eat of that, you are doomed to die.Genesis 2; 16-17

 

 You are made, you are not God, only God is God. You are God’s son or daughter. You are created and loved with all your limitations of human being. Accept the condition of creation in all its dimensions. Do not covet divinity (to be more important then God).

 

To be human is to be finite. To live happily requires acceptance of that reality. The Bible explains this by means of an allegory – the story of the first man who, despite abundance, obsesses about what lies beyond human limitation. By means of this story, we are invited to occupy our rightful place in creation, to recognize the source of life and live plentifully within these bounds without regret, compulsion or envy. By the same token, living plentifully means to not be limited by own own mistakes, losses or vulnerability. To live plentifully, we must accept the fact that we are not operating in isolation; we act authentically when we are connected to our creator, who holds the truth of what is in our best interest. Without God’s wisdom, we are too easily deceived.

 

3. Development of specific identity of each person / deployment of our unique identity in realtion to God and others

 

Yahweh said to Abram, 'Leave your country, your kindred and your father's house for a country which I shall show you… Genesis 12; 1

 

…you are no longer to be called Abram; your name is to be Abraham, for I am making you father of many nations.  Genesis 17; 5

 

Let anyone who can hear, listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches: to those who prove victorious I will give some hidden manna and a white stone, with a new name written on it, known only to the person who receives it.  Revelation 2; 17

 

You are created and loved as the one and only - so special; so become yourself, go your own way which God shows you. God forbids you to mix your identity with somebody else’s, to possess or own anyone or to be possessed by someone or something; you must not have disorder in your relationships; you must not yield before authority that exceeds its authority or to follow those in the media or in power who promote corruption and immoral acting. Do not desire what someone else has or who they are.

 

During his epic walk with God, the father of the three traditional monotheistic religions learns important lessons about who he is. He is known to his family, friends and neighbours as Abran (Gn 12:1). In the name Abram is contained the totality of what others assume to be his personality, aptitudes, weaknesses and destiny. Consequently, that is who he thinks he is. But that is not the name by which God knows him. It is not the spiritual identity that God had in mind from the beginning. To discover it, he must leave the land of his ancestors and follow God’s leadership to assume his rightful place and name, Abraham (Gn 17:5).

 

4. Search for integration in your personality - integral dimension of love / Quest for unity of the person inhabited by the living God

Listen, Israel: Yahweh our God is the one, the only Yahweh. 5 You must love Yahweh your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. 6 Let the words I enjoin on you today stay in your heart.Deuteronomy 6; 4-6

 

The Word became flesh…  John 1; 14

 

You are a unity in your body, psyche and heart, that enlivens your person. Do not separate or mix them, discover their internal hierarchy.
Learn from the Holy Spirit, how to cooperate with Him, so he can give life to your humanity.

 

Before the time of Jesus, the Jewish people had hundreds of sanctions and laws that had to be obeyed to the letter. They would understandably think that winning God’s favour would be difficult , if not impossible. They would become discouraged if it were not for the social pressure to conform as much as possible, bearing the gilt of their transgressions. Jesus reminded them thet the ancient Law (Dt 6:5; Lv 19:18) contains two priorities: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind; and your neighbour as much as you love yourself (Lk 10:27).

In other words, joy depends on our being reconciled with our true identity, our creator, and creation. Joy depends on our consciousness of God’s spirit dwelling within us and teaching us the ways of truth and love: Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? (1Cor 2:16).

 

From the Christian perspective, we are reminded that as God is one in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we are one in body, mind and soul. Our genuine joy is in the unity of our person animated by God’s truth and love. We breach thhis law when we become fragmented or obsessed with one aspect of our being at the axclusion of others. Unity calls for reconciliation and balance.   

 

5. Abundance and gift – life as fecundity

 

God blessed them, saying to them, 'Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven and all the living creatures that move on earth.Genesis 1; 28

 

His master said to him, "Well done, good and trustworthy servant; you have shown you are trustworthy in small things; I will trust you with greater; come and join in your master's happiness. Matthew 25; 14-21

 

As a plant gives life to flowers, and as a tree bears fruits so you should open yourself for abundance in your life. Multiply and develop different gifts you have been given. Know and discover your value and do not lower your self-value, do not close in upon yourself, do not demean your self, do not hide or bury your most intimate and authentic desires.

 

God’s plan has always been creative. God charges us with the role of cocreators, collaborators in the building of an awesome kingdom of love: God blessed them, saying to them, 'Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven and all the living creatures that move on earth.(Gn 1:28)

Spiritual joy comes from living as blessed by God and emraced by the risen One; living „productively” (but not nesessarily according to the world’s limited definition of that word); and receiving God’s love, living in it, and sharing it with others. We transgress this law when we refuse God’s gifts or refuse to develop them. We deny life when we undervalue or repress God’s gifts.

Transformative spirituality that is transcendent and healing includes, therefore, a determination to be fruitful in the manner of Jesus’ own teaching  - to be builders of a kingdom, as we read in Mt 25: 14-21.