Choices

“[E]very time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than 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 into a heavenly creature or 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

Each day I make hundreds of choices.  Maybe even thousands.  Most often, these choices are not major in and of themselves, and yet despite their seeming triviality, C.S. Lewis challenges me to rethink such presuppositions.  A whole is almost always composed of much smaller entities. In this case, it is my day-to-day decisions.  This quote from C.S. Lewis is quite powerful and really has me thinking.  Why do I choose the things that I do?  What motivates me?  I am not naïve enough to think that my decisions are completely unbiased or unmotivated by something at their root, for they are indeed. The question is, what?  And whatever my answer, C.S. Lewis makes it very clear that it is by no means inconsequential.  Rather, it is of high consequence!  I am either choosing paths that lead me towards God and eternal joy or away from Him and towards eternal damnation.  This life is only a mere shadow of the next, and the Heaven or Hell I find myself in here is only a foretaste of what is to come.  Ideas have consequences.    My ideas have consequences.  My decisions and actions have consequences—eternal consequences!  This is no trivial matter.  I think it’s time I start examining even the smallest decisions I make and pray for both the awareness and wisdom to discern between those things which are of God and those that are not of Him.  There is a war raging around and within us, a war for our hearts and minds and souls.  If Satan can lead us astray in the small things, he gains a foothold and runs rampant.  Oh God, let me not be led astray in the small things.  Let none of us be blinded to our own sin and wandering hearts.  Keep our hearts and minds and souls stayed on You.  Through the power of Your Spirit, lead us step by step, day by day.  Change us into heavenly creatures for Your glory, and let us not become the hellish creatures that hate you.  Save us from ourselves, oh God!  Save me from myself!