To have life is to have choice, a choice of our attitude. Many life choices are largely binary. You either choose one or the other. However, each choice is like an African family; they never come alone when invited to a home, you invite one and others who are part of their family comes along.
If you choose love, along comes joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; but if you choose selfishness, along comes lewdness, idolatry, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, dissensions, adultery, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the likes.
It all starts from sleep—when you wake up, you have two choices to make: to get out of bed or to stay in it. If you get out of bed, great! You may have even more binary choices to make.
But if you stay in bed, you have two choices to make. Blame something or someone for your poor productivity or accept responsibility for your poor productivity. If you accept responsibility, great! You can initiate the process of turning your bad day around.
But, if you blame something or someone, well, your choice pathway has been narrowed down. Blame is like a pin between pins in a tenpin bowling game, with misery and frustration on either side. You knock on blame and misery and frustration will come along. What you really need is to find is a place to turn around.
Let me tell you a story! I remember travelling with my wife to South Wales some years ago, in the days before GPS and satnav. It was late at night, and the windy narrow road—so beautiful in the day when you can soak in the green and luscious landscape—was absorbed by the anxious darkness of the night. Our route was systematically outlined on a piece of paper. Take the next left, said the instruction, and so I did, but, alas, it was one left too soon. We made one wrong turn, which was the wrong choice at a crossroad, and then continued to follow the written instruction and now we were totally lost. After driving for four miles and not seeing the next expected landmark, we realised that we were lost. We were now searching for a good place to turn around. And how grateful we were when we found not just a place, but also good people to point us in the right direction!
Especially in this season of the pandemic. The Multi-Faith Chaplaincy is a good place; with chaplains waiting to point you in the right direction if you ever find yourself trying to negotiate and navigate life’s difficult binary choices. We are all travellers and every so often, we come to life’s crossroads where we must make decisions. Sometimes the road of our choice may lead us to an even narrower road; and if we have made a poor choice, this is a good place to turn around and seek the chaplains waiting to help.
Pastor Obi Iheoma – Seventh-Day Adventist Chaplain