It’s that time of year again when students at every level are purchasing books and supplies that they need to begin new classes and new courses. Obviously, the number of possible books and supplies can seem endless, but to be prepared for the days ahead each student will need the right books and supplies for this particular season.

I recall this season well as both a mom and a former teacher. It’s a bit like a “rite of passage” as the summer nears its end, but for many of us the love of books we may have developed years ago lingers on. And I confess that I am one of those. If I buy a book, I am always reluctant to ever throw it away so usually I look for a new “home” for it with someone else who may need or enjoy it.

My life has taken many turns and at each one I accumulated a “library” of sorts. When I left teaching, I had stacks of books and materials I knew I would not need or use again. They had been my “tools” of the trade and served me well. There were assessments I found helpful, posters and borders for classroom bulletin boards, and a great many other things. Very few needed to be thrown out because I searched out other new teachers who could benefit from the “tools” and save themselves money in the bargain. (Most teachers spend a lot of money setting up their own classroom beyond what the school may be able to supply.) But I took with me a wealth of experience I had gained in teaching my special education students and relating with their parents and other teachers.

My new turn from teaching to become a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor and Independent Marriage and Family Therapist required new and different “tools” for my workplace. Little-by-little I began to acquire a new “library” to help equip me with what I needed. It didn’t take long until the bookshelves in my office were filled to overflowing and bookshelves at home were filling up as well. The result was choosing the very best of these for my office where they would be readily available at a moment’s notice. As a result, those who came to my office and know me well would chuckle as they would tell you their memory of times in my office as I was sitting listening to them. I would turn in my chair and reach for a particular book and a particular spot in the book to share something with them that was exactly the area we had been focusing on. They were often puzzled at how I could do that so easily. Little wonder my difficulty with deciding what to do with the large number of books and resources on those office shelves when I retired more than 10 years ago. (Our bookshelves at home were already full…my husband reads many as well.)

For me there was no real mystery about what my clients saw me do. I think I have a relationship with most of the books I read (some more than others) and the most significant ones will have places underlined and highlighted or marked with post-it flags to alert me to the exact places I want to remember. Some of those are ones that first ministered to me. Over the course of my careers and life, the Lord has been helping me prepare for each day and season with the things He knew I would need.

He knew the books that would help equip and shape me, the conferences where notes and resource lists would help me. He also knew that when my children were young and I was enjoying staying at home full-time that there was more time to immerse myself in the Bible and what that would do to shape my beliefs, values, confidence, courage, and understanding. When our children went off to school, you could often have found me sitting in my favorite chair reading for big chunks of time. To all of these, the Lord added my experiences as well as those of others who intersected my life along the way. He wasted nothing and taught me the value of not wasting them either.

Those things and that knowledge was what brought a smile to my face as I was reading the Gospel of Matthew in The Message rendering and came to this verse where Jesus is speaking to his disciples:

“He said, “Then you see how every student well-trained in God’s kingdom is like the owner of a general store who can put his hands on anything you need, old or new, exactly when you need it.”

Mt. 13:52 (MSG)

You never really know how what you are reading, watching, listening to, or thinking about will be something the Lord tucks away for one day in the future. You may not even recall that you have it tucked away, but suddenly He can and will often bring it to mind as something for you or someone else at just the right time. You don’t need to be a teacher, counselor, ministry leader, or writer. The Lord delights in using each one of us in some of the most unexpected places and with people we may not even have met until that moment. I love how the writer of Proverbs reminds us of that idea:

“The right word at the right time

    is like a custom-made piece of jewelry,

And a wise friend’s timely reprimand

    is like a gold ring slipped on your finger.” Proverbs 25:11-13 (MSG)

The Lord wants us to be equipped for what He calls us to be and do, those He wants us to connect with and those He will allow to intersect with us. But the great news is that He is in the business of doing it before we even realize or recognize that He has done it. He is really that GOOD!

You cannot imagine perhaps how whatever is happening in your life today might have use for Him or how what you are reading, watching, or listening to could be a benefit at some future point. But I can tell you from my own lived experience that it is just like Him. I am guessing the boy who showed up on the hillside to listen to Jesus preach and had a small lunch of 5 loaves and 2 fish would be the first to jump up and agree!

Choices face us every day. Sometimes even the simplest choices of whether to have chocolate or butter pecan ice cream seems to give us pause (especially if we like both). We have so many choices to make each day that we might wish we could remain neutral and not make any choice at all, but that isn’t how life is set up.

When we are a young child, a parent may choose when we get up. Even as a teen most parents have a limit of how long we can “sleep in” on the weekend. As adults we can choose to get up or not, but there is no neutral ground of “halfway up” and the choice brings a consequence for us either way.

In a world that has become increasingly polarized on nearly every issue and topic, it can be tempting to want to steer clear of all of them and find a cozy spot in the middle. That means we don’t “show our hand” on what we really believe and hope that means we stay out of the melee of both sides. But that might be what too many have already been tempted to do that has brought us to this chaotic place of polarization. We set aside deciding based on principles and values that we thought were important and would basically always be there no matter what our response. Abdicating our choice meant someone else made one and then someone else made one and little by little principles and values we believed would always basically be there no matter what we did or did not do began to disappear.

Down through history as conflicts have broken out between villages, tribes, and nations, some have attempted to stay neutral. There were reasons for that perhaps, but it meant they could not or would not decide there was a right or a wrong and it wasn’t affecting them at the time. But history also shows that most could not and did not remain neutral.

You see, inherent within evil is a desire for control and a lust for power and it is never quenched within its own boundaries and territories. It seeks more and more and as it gets more, the hunger is never satiated.

Evil slips in little by little in the hope we will not notice at the outset. It can start with a “white lie” or a “fib” that we believe protects someone or something and we choose it instead of the truth. That usually requires a more specific “lie” at some point down the line and most of us know that once that ball starts rolling there is rarely any turning back. We start deceiving more and more people and it becomes such a habit that we miss that we are also deceiving ourselves. Principles and values are long forgotten because we must keep up the image, the facade, or we and everything we have constructed with our lies will crumble around us. To not decide for what is good, right, just, and absolute truth, is a decision against them all. Even if we think or say we believe otherwise, that is what happens.

It can seem as if we can avoid making those hard decisions where we stand for what we say we know is true and right, but if we believe that it will never catch up with us, we are deceived. That is something history also shows us even if the revelation comes long after the wrong choice. The world was set up that way when God created it and us and chose to risk giving us the gift of freedom and choice. And from the outset we proved we struggled with making the right choice and that resulted in the loss of freedom.

Many of us grew up hating the subject of history when we were in school and now we live in an era where we choose to forget, ignore, or seek to rewrite it.

Our stories construct our history of choices. They give evidence of our character and our testimony. Scripture teaches there is no neutral ground. We must make a choice of good or evil, God or his enemy. There are many verses in the Bible that point to this but reading in Matthew this week points to one that is succinct:

“This is war, and there is no neutral ground. If you’re not on my side, you’re the enemy; if you’re not helping, you’re making things worse.”

Matthew 12:30 (MSG)

The verse and the passage where it is found has grabbed my attention all week. Am I helping? If so, how am I doing that in my daily life and choices? Am I making things worse? What have I said or done that might result in that? Those questions sound harsh, but they have echoed in my mind and heart as I consider whether the choices I make represent the decision I made to be a believer in Christ who stands for truth above opinion, what is right versus what is convenient, what is eternal versus what only lasts for the moment.

Like it or not, history will catch up with us and reveal the truth – there is no neutral ground.

I cannot recall when I first came to grips with how much I wanted the option to choose something for myself. I am confident it began in early childhood. It usually does for all of us. It can be those pesky things about what we play with and whom we play with or what we want to wear or don’t want to wear, and so on. Early on in our lives that desire to be unfettered by the choices of others pokes its head up above the surface.

What I didn’t recognize for so much longer was the responsibility that was mine when I was allowed to choose. I couldn’t blame anyone else when I was the one choosing.

After that began to dawn on me, I think that most days I went along making choices and not thinking a great deal about them. So many daily choices can seem inconsequential at the time and many of them truly are, but not all. Sometimes the consequence of the choice does not show up for a very long time so it can be easy to forget my part in it.

I can choose to eat only the things I like and only go to bed or work when I feel like it. The first day I make such a choice is easy. It is even easier to do so a second day because I usually experience no consequences for it at the time. I won’t notice the effect on my health for perhaps a long time. I won’t notice that I actually reduce how many options I increasingly must choose from if those patterns aren’t healthy.

Small choices develop patterns of choices over time that lead to results I never bargained for.

I can easily forget that choice was first of all a gift from my Creator at the very beginning. It was and is a powerful gift! He wants me to choose to love Him and devote my life to Him. He could have made it a mandate for His creation, but He didn’t. And choices are often not easy.

“Soon we must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy.”

J. K. Rowling

An easy choice seems to cost me nothing. An easy choice fits in because it agrees with everyone else’s choice. An easy choice looks good on the outside.

I wonder if God gives us so many opportunities to practice choosing because He knows that at some point the things we must choose between will not be at all easy. Some of those things will come from small things we thought had no meaning or consequence. Some of them will come as a bolt out of the night and expose our cowardice when we try to avoid the choice that has come to us.

Each choice will finally highlight what we believe. It will also expose whom we believe and whether we are willing to risk being identified with Him, risk following Him, and risk trusting Him when it isn’t easy. Each choice will expose areas of unbelief as well.

In every great story, every great movie, the character in the story learns of a choice that is set before them. The tension in the reader or the audience grows steadily as the character grapples with the choice. In The Matrix Neo is offered the choice between the blue pill and the red pill without clear assurance for what will happen with either choice.

Frodo chooses to accept the ring and the challenges that come with it, but as he comes to realize how difficult that path is in The Fellowship of the Ring he says, “I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.” The ever-wise Gandalf responds, “So do all who live to see such times but that is not for them to decide. All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given you.”

I think one thing is certain. The choices I make today will prepare me for the choices ahead. The truth that I bury in my heart will form the foundation of what I believe. That foundation will help me face the choice between what is right and what is easy.

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We live in an era where those who are chosen for honor and accolades are the most skilled and gifted, the most talented and attractive, the most popular and charismatic, and the most attractive and appealing. But it’s true that mankind has tended toward such criteria for choosing leaders or those destined for some special position down through history.

The covers of our magazines choose the rich and the famous, the beautiful and successful. TV and movies choose men and women whose figures and hairlines are often flawless. Only the very best minds receive academic scholarships and only the athletes with the strongest and most consistent performance are drafted for college and professional teams.

With God it’s a different story…

He consistently chooses the unlikely one.  

Rebekah carries within her twin sons, Esau and Jacob, and at every turn Jacob connives and cheats Esau out of his birthright and father’s blessing. He deceives his father and yet it is Jacob who is chosen to be in the line from Abraham who shows up in the lineage of Christ.

The children of Jacob (now Israel) are enslaved in Egypt and God chooses Moses whom He spared in the bulrushes to lead His people to the Promised Land. Yet Moses has a hard time speaking and needs to ask his brother Aaron to do the talking for him.

When Joshua sends the spies into the Promised Land to scout out the city of Jericho, the spies are at risk to be caught and killed, but God chooses a prostitute, Rahab, to hide them. Her choice results in her salvation when God gives Jericho into the hands of Joshua and puts her in a marriage that adds her name to the lineage of Christ.

When Israel wanted a king, Saul was chosen. He towered among many of the day and seemed a likely choice; but when He disobeyed God and chose his own way, the Lord rejected him. Whom did He choose next? He sent Samuel to the house of Jesse who was blessed with many sons who were skilled and experienced, but when He made His choice it was the youngest and least likely…David…who would be made king of Israel.

When Jesus came to earth and was starting His ministry, He called ordinary fishermen to be his disciples rather than the religious leaders of the day. He even chose a tax collector.

God honored a small man named Zacchaeus to have dinner at his house even though he was hiding up in a tree.

In the midst of preaching on a hillside to thousands of people, Jesus became concerned that people there were hungry and needed to be fed. He asked the disciples to get food. They had no food with them, but a small boy with a sack lunch provided the meal Jesus blessed and everyone was fed.

After Jesus ascended into heaven and His disciples were gathering together to follow His commission, Saul, a learned Pharisee did all he could to stop them. Then God stopped Saul on his way to persecute more new believers in Damascus and changed his life and name forever. Saul (now Paul) became the great missionary to spread the gospel to the Gentiles.

And it didn’t stop there.

From the beginning until now, God has chosen the least likely, the ordinary, the broken and the flawed, the misunderstood and maligned.

No matter who you are or what your status, no matter how you have failed Him, His love pursues you and if His love pursues you, He has chosen you.

You may well wonder at that. I certainly do, but it is Paul whom no one expected to become a believer that points to God’s reason in 2 Corinthians 4:7:

“We are like common clay jars that carry this glorious treasure within, so that the extraordinary overflow of power will be seen as God’s, not ours.”

2 Cor. 4:7 (TPT)

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What makes it so difficult to take the message of Jesus about rest and apply it to our stress-filled busy lives? Many of us know His message about this and yet we persist. As I look through the rearview mirror, I can see how often I did! The tyranny of the “should’s” and the “ought’s” kept me in tow and their influence was a powerful tool to keep me running like the gerbil on the wheel. Those two words haunted me in every area of my life.

I could tell you the family dynamics and birth order research to explain some of those, but those (though significant) took me down rabbit trails trying harder to be better. As a result of my clinical counseling graduate program, I knew a great deal about healthy boundaries. They added to the things I needed to remember and do. Even the “to do” list that I heard from many Christians added to the stress that came from not feeling good enough. I knew they were good things, but it felt a bit like the Pharisees adding to the law.

What did Paul want me to understand from 2 Corinthians 3:5? That verse is highlighted and underlined in my Bible.

“Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God,”

2 Cor. 3:5 (NASB)

I had felt inadequate much of my life in multiple areas, but my response was to try harder and do more. That would be a good example of how duped I/we could be by the devices Satan has used effectively for thousands of years. Perhaps when I or we do good things or important things, it makes it more difficult to detect his fingerprints on the issue. After all caring for our children, spouses, homes, ministries, jobs, neighbors, family members and friends are all important. We are not to be selfish so we press on.

Jesus tells us to take His yoke when we are weary and heavy-laden. That speaks in direct words to tiredness and stress. Matthew 11:28-30…do we even pause to consider what the verse tells us or what He means?

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.²⁹ Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

Mt. 11:28-30 (NASB)

So why do I/you resist or fear His yoke for what it means?

Hannah Anderson in Humble Roots names the problem for what it is:

“We fear the loss of control. We fear surrender. But we must understand that without protection of a good master, we are not safe. From the manipulation of other masters. From the expectations of society. From ourselves.”

Hannah Anderson

Ah, yes, that annoying nagging issue of control. How often each of us can plead guilty on that one once the Holy Spirit starts turning on the light so we see more clearly. Hannah says we need a “good master” and I can fathom no better one than Jesus. But if I/you are weary, tired, and stressed, is there another ‘master’ in charge driving us? I found it helpful to look at what other ‘masters’ might be at work in my life, those whom I gave too much control. That looks at control from the flip side I tended to view. What I saw was how easily the expectations of those ‘masters’ were behind so much of the unrest I experienced.

I hadn’t intended to give over control to other ‘masters’ who were manipulating nor had I intended to allow expectations of society to take the upper hand. Expectations of myself? I had plenty of those in abundance. By the time I reached this point, I was certain those were ineffectual and added to the drivenness creating the stress and exhaustion.

Hannah’s insightful words in Humble Roots point to the steps needed:

“And so we must respond to Jesus’ call. We must come to Him. We must come to Him and learn (emphasis mine) of His gentleness and humility. We must come to Him to be tamed.”

Hannah Anderson