Choices

Back in the 1970’s there was a movie in which the opening scene showed George Burns fixing himself some breakfast. He started out by putting a pan on the stove and turning the stove on, taking an egg and cracking it and then putting the eggshell into the carton, which was empty and throwing it away. He picked up a pencil and wrote eggs on a pad of paper that was on the counter by the stove. The pencil broke. Next he took 2 slices of bacon out of a package that he had retrieved from the refrigerator, put the bacon in the pan with the egg, and threw the empty bacon package away. Reaching for another pencil, he wrote bacon, at which point the lead in that pencil shattered. Turning to the bread box he took out a sack with bread in it, put the bread in the toaster and threw the empty sack away. He took out another new pencil and wrote the word bread on his list. Simultaneously the pencil broke. He then took a knife, emptied the butter dish and buttered his toast. He arranged everything neatly on his plate and got another new pencil and wrote the word pencils.




This movie scene is illustrative of how life has become for many of us today. We all have lists and on those lists we have prioritized what we want to have or do or see in our quest for real life. We buy a car and it has a finely tuned roar to its engine. It handles curves like fine leather gloves on a hand and we drive it with our fullest attention and utmost gusto only to discover within a few months that all the luster is gone. It still looks the same and it still drives the same, but it’s not the same. The pencil has broken. And so we move on down the list. A new marriage, more education, a better paying job, or a more finely tuned body all take their turns at bat. No matter how hard we swing or how much we practice the emptiness that is deep in our guts still pulls at us and drives us to get one more pencil. Not to be unfair, that’s all these things are able to do. They are temporal and by their very nature they wear out, they break, get stolen or lost. We are not temporal. We are eternal and we yearn for a connection with the eternal that we know is out there somewhere.



God is eternal. He is the only one who has always been and always will be. He created us to be like Him, in that once born we should never die. He created us to be bonded to His spirit in an unbreakable love that will satisfy all of our wants and needs on an eternal level. The Bible tells us that God was so loving toward man that He sent His only son so that nobody would perish but everybody could come to eternal life. Jesus said, “You want to know what the Father looks like, feels like, acts like? Hang around me!” Jesus doesn’t break. Jesus doesn’t disappoint, desert, or deceive. Everything He says He’s heard from His Father. Everything He does, He’s seen His Father do. The luster never comes off of Jesus. We might not perceive it all the time, but it’s always there.



Like the character in the movie played by George Burns, we have to live in the natural world. When we fix breakfast, sometimes we break the yolk, and all we can do is make scrambled eggs. But there’s a decision making process that comes with our first breath and lasts our final breath. The question is whether we live for ourselves or for others; whether we will draw our life from God or waste our life on ourselves. It’s far too simple for most of us to understand. It removes all excuses and justifications and brings our souls down to the base level, unflattering as it may be. We make these choices hundreds of times a day. In making these choices our characters are formed and the foundation of our wisdom is established. I think all of this can be summed up in one simple phrase: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”