Life Choices

Life Choices

(Revelation 3:14-22)

Robert Frost, one of America’s favorite poets, wrote a poem that I like very much. Listen to the words of Robert Frost as he penned in the poem, “ The Road Not Taken”:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

This is not the entire poem but we see that Robert Frost begins to, in this poem, shares with the audience a very interesting phenomenon. He shares one of the fundamental challenges of life, one of the confrontations of living. Robert Frost in this poem, speaks about one of the nomadic occasions of our exsistence, he speaks of the issue, of the phenomenon called choice. This poem shares with us the very being of us and that is the ability and the necessity of making choices in our life, in other words life choices.

Everyday we are confronted with life choices, choices that need to be made that have a direct relationship to our life. Choices like to run the yellow light or stop, to take the expressway or the back streets. Choices like to marry now or wait a little while later. For there are some divorcees’ (like my mother) who have said, If I would have just waited a little while longer in dating, I would have seen the real person come out. Life Choices. What to eat, in spite of what food scientists say, we still choose to eat certain things. I was having lunch with some friends; we were at Sylvia’s Downtown. As we sat there with menus in hand, we were deciding on what we should have to eat. The waitress came over and began to suggest entrées and answered our questions about the menu. My friend, Big Rock decided on the buffet, which featured, Fried chicken, Fried Fish, collard greens, Macaroni and Cheese, and so on. After about 3 rounds to the buffet, Rock’s girlfriend couldn’t take it anymore and she said, “Rock, you are going to kill yourself from eating all that fried Chicken and stuff,” and Rock replied back, “ When it’s my time to go, I will go and until then I will keep eating what I chose to eat!” Life Choices, not long ago in Atlanta, a young irate man was driving behind an elderly man and they came to a light. The elderly man’s van fell dead at the red light, as he tried to restart his vehicle, the young man got impatient and began blowing and sticking up rude and obscene gestures with his hands and fingers. The young man could not pass to the sides of the van because traffic was moving quickly. He kept blowing, and cursing, and physically showing his disgust to the elderly man. The light turned red again and the young man jumped out of his car, yelling and screaming at the elderly man. He approached the van in a fury and frightened the elderly man. In a twinkling of the eye the old man pulled out his gun and shot the young man in the head. Life choices.

Everyday we are faced with choices that have a direct bearing on our soul existence, on our very life. The more I think about it, Mr. Frost maybe on to something, we are faced with roads, (both seemingly offering the same benefit). We are faced with paths, available choices to have to be made, and the ones we make directly apply and affect our life. Those are Life Choices.

In our text, we see that the Church at Laodecia is facing a life choice. John the Revelator speaks to this church and delivers to them the words of Jesus, who sits as the faithful life assessor. Jesus who sits on the throne, who has direct TV if you will, peers down in our lives and occasionally makes assessments. Jesus is faithful in making life assessments, and true in the conveyance of what He finds. Jesus is faithful to the eternal purposes of God consequently Jesus is faithful to judge when judgment is required and absolutely true about what he sees, therefore he can make some assessments. To quote J Anthony Brown, “Jesus tells it like it is.” In other words he is the judge and witness all rolled into one. And so Jesus speaks to John concerning this church and Jesus tells John to deliver a word to the Laodecian Church pointing out the assessment Jesus has made, pointing out the value of this Church based on it’s actions.