“But if it doesn’t please you to worship the LORD, choose for yourselves today: Which will you worship — the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living? As for me and my family, we will worship the LORD.” 
Joshua 24:15

In the beginning…

Recently, we began a walk-through of the Bible as a family. (We’re using the Bible Project plan on the YouVersion Bible app if you’re looking for something similar. The Bible Recap is a good one as well.)

So often we think the first chapters of Genesis are like a prologue, an intro to the real book. It’s only there to tell us where we are and how we got into this mess in the first place. The reality is, though, that those first books open a new, massive understanding about God every single time I read them. They are the only glimpse we have into the perfection He wanted to create.

Until, of course, that perfection was ruined by a choice.

I don’t know about you, but somewhere along the line as a child I got the idea that the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was some sort of magical fruit and that by eating it, Adam and Eve were somehow contaminated.

But it isn’t the fruit. The fruit could be a pear, a cherry, a jackfruit, a mango, a jabuticaba, or even the all popular apple. The fruit doesn’t matter past the fact that it existed and this was – probably – the only tree in the garden that grew it. There was nothing magical or deadly about the fruit itself.

The problem lay in the choice.

By choosing to eat the fruit, Adam and Eve were rejecting God’s plan and creating their own. He could have just as easily said don’t wade through this stream, don’t sleep on this hill, or don’t stand on your head after sunset because the action itself wasn’t what brought that perfect paradise to an end. It was the choice.

Every day after…

We get to choose things every day. We get to choose between hope or despair. We get to choose between immediate gratification or long-term gain. We get to choose if we will be kind, give each other and ourselves grace, and realize that a baby step towards holiness is still progress.

We get to choose if we will write people off as unlovable and unworthy of our time or consideration. We get to choose between unity of all God’s children or uniformity of interest and mindset.

We get to choose if we’ll accept God’s input or rely on our own understanding. Every day, every hour we face the same choice Israel did as they settled into the Promised Land.

“Choose for yourselves today: Which will you worship”

We have Joshua’s answer on the wall in our home, a reminder that on our wedding day, my husband and I made that same promise to God before our friends and family.

“As for me and my family, we will worship the LORD.”

You have choices to make today.

Choose wisely.