how they had been picking

From something for a few days from now:

Americans are conditioned to embrace choice and flee from restriction. The Lord built in us this desire for choice, and He gave us the free will to be able to make choices. And as Joshua 24 reminds us, we always have choices in our relationship with God. Joshua says “choose for yourselves today whom you will serve.” Making choices is part of who we are, and how God made us. We were created this way.

One of my favorite verses in the Bible can be found in Deuteronomy 30. The majority of the book of Deuteronomy is Moses explaining to the people of Israel the laws laid out by God, and the consequences for choosing to break those laws. And after spending 29 chapters going through these hundreds of laws, Moses in chapter 30 breaks down the choice the people of God have in front of them very simply. In Deuteronomy 30:15-20, the Bible says:

See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, and death and adversity; in that I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, that you may live and multiply, and that the LORD your God may bless you in the land where you are entering to possess it. But if your heart turns away and you will not obey, but are drawn away and worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall surely perish. You will not prolong your days in the land where you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess it. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the LORD your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him.

Choose life, the Bible says. Choose life. The choices we make about what we do with our time, who we spend it with, where we spend it, what we say, where we go, how we serve, how we give, where we give, what we choose – all of that, every choice ultimately walks this line between life and prosperity and death and adversity, between blessing and curse.