Making Choices

by Sean Beckwith
December 18, 2019

Read Psalm 119:33-40
Psalm 119:33-34 (ESV)
Teach me, O LORD, the way of your statutes;
 and I will keep it to the end.
Give me understanding, that I may keep your law
and observe it with my whole heart.

People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, “If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.” I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.
–C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

O Lord, who has mercy upon all, take away from me my sins,
and mercifully kindle in me the fire of thy Holy Spirit.
Take away from me the heart of stone, and give me a heart of flesh, 
a heart to love and adore You, a heart to delight in You, 
to follow and enjoy You, for Christ’s sake. Amen.
-Ambrose of Milan, 4th century