Hard Choices

Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. Isaiah 41:10

Yesterday was the Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. Sometimes choices are hard. Sometimes we make the wrong choice. Sometimes we don't fully understand the choice until it's too late to change the choice. But God is the Great Forgiver and Lover of our souls. 

When I began to keep chickens, I wanted to raise my own flock. I didn't know how to keep my hens from laying with my setting hen. I hated wasting eggs, so I attempted to sort them without candling them (looking inside with a light through the shell.) One day I cracked an egg into a bowl and there lay a yolk with a few arteries stretching across it with a tiny heart beating.

Oh no. What had I done? I couldn't put it back in the shell. I couldn't keep it warm, and I couldn't throw it in the trash. It was alive and dying before my eyes. Over the next 20 minutes, I watched the heartbeat slow as the egg cooled down to room temperature. I tried to walk away but I always returned to check on it, wishing it to live, knowing it would die. I had made the wrong choice. Finally, the little heart no longer beat. I slid it into the trash, my heart broken.

Jochebed (Exodus 6:20) faced a much harder choice. She conceived a child during the reign of a Pharoah that demanded all Hebrew baby boys be thrown into the river. What if she and Amram disobeyed? Could this child cost her her life? Could it cost Amram's life, the life of her other children as well? It was a hard choice to hide her newborn son but faith in the all powerful, all knowing God gave her the strength to hide him three months. 

When things became hopeless she placed him in a basket in the very river that should have been his death. She couldn't watch so she asked her daughter. Hidden in the reeds, Miriam watched. The daughter of Pharoah came with her maids to bathe. Seeing the basket she sent one of her maids to retrieve it. There she found a crying babe. 

The baby's sister stepped out of hiding and offered to find a nursemaid for the child. Jochebed's baby went home to his mom. 

We are sometimes faced with hard choices. We need to "candle" our choices. Hold them up to the Light. The right choice is often the hardest. 

Please - Choose Life.