Choices

Everything you do in life requires you to make a choice. When you get up in the morning and you have to get dressed, you have a make a choice. When it’s time for breakfast, you have to make a choice; when it’s  time to go to work, you have to make a choice; do you walk, take the bus, drive or travel by Uber. In life, you can’t get away from making choices.

One Sunday, I left for church with some work for school because I made the choice to procrastinate. Report Cards we due at 8 am on Monday and I was not done. To be honest, I slated the time between services as the time to complete the Report Cards. Now I’m not talking about the modern Report Cards that are done on the computer. No! Real old school, when they were done by hand. All the comments and grades were hand written.

Most Sundays, I would be completing this activity in the comfort of my home, but we had another service scheduled for early evening. Just as I was about to grab my bag so that I can begin my work, I was approached with some things that needed to get done before that service began. I made a choice to do it. I left the Report Cards and started the assignment. I thought that there was enough time to complete this and still do the bulk of my work. However, I found myself totally overwhelmed with what was before me. I couldn’t do both, I could only do one. I chose to continue.

At the end of the service, I was extremely tired but I still had to work on those Report Cards. When I arrived home, I worked until 12:30 am, set the alarm for 4:00 am and went to sleep. I awoke at 4:00 am and completed the Report Cards before going to work. I submitted them to my supervising AP and went about my day. At lunch time she returned them. I looked for the comments because there are always comments. The comment said, “Thank you, Ms. Scott.” There was nothing to change! I couldn’t believe it. I whispered a silent thank you to God for His goodness.  I paused and wondered what if I had made an excuse not to help yesterday.

People are always looking for excuses. Moses is not the only person. We use excuses to get out of activities we don’t like. Sometimes we use excuses to get out of service to the Lord. There is a young woman who did that. Her name was Esther. One day, the king decided to get rid of the queen because she refused his command. In those days, before kings go out to battle, they try to get neighboring kings to join them. In order to convince these kings that they had enough money to finance the war, they would host a part that would last from about three to six months. By this time, these men are drunk and exhibit drunken behavior.

One day they wanted Queen Vashti to come to the party so they could admire her beauty and she refused. She was removed as queen and Esther became queen in her place. He uncle, Mordecai instructed her to keep her heritage private. However, there was an official, Haman, who hated Mordecai because he would not bow before him and devised a plan to get rid of him.

Haman pitched his plan to the king who signed it. When Mordecai saw that they were all doomed for death, he asked Esther to go before the king. She responded in Esther 4:11, “All the king’s officials and even the people in the provinces know that anyone who appears before the king in his inner court without being invited is doomed to die unless the king holds out his gold scepter. And the king has not called for me to come to him for thirty days.”  Esther made an excuse because she didn’t want to go before the king.

Mordecai responded in verses 13-14, “Don’t think for a moment that because you’re in the palace you will escape when all other Jews are killed. If you keep quiet at a time like this, deliverance and relief for the Jews will arise from some other place, but you and your relatives will die. Who knows if perhaps you were made queen for just such a time as this?” In other words, your choices have consequences.

Esther had to decide if she could live with the consequences of her choice. Mordecai believed that they would not all die through Haman’s plan however, if she continued to make excuses, she would perish. In the end, Esther became part of the solution.  She went to see the king and although he could not reverse the decree that Haman tricked him to sign, he gave them the ability to defend themselves and God gave the victory. Everyone has the same choice to make: take action or make an excuse. The choice is yours.