Choices

According to multiple sources online, the average adult makes over 35,000 choices a day.  That number seems unreal to me.

Thinking through my typical day...
Will I get up immediately or hit snooze?  Shower or no?  Curly or straight?  Dress up or down?  Should I wake my son now or let him sleep?  Will he get up easy or struggle?  Extra coffee or make time for breakfast?  And that is only the first 15 minutes of my day.

Most of my choices are habitual, automatic, turning in places before I've really thought out loud.  At work and on the road I'm faced with choosing and prioritizing, shifting and dealing with constant changes in plans.

Once home, the ultimate question my husband and I face daily - what's for dinner?  Even being the planner I am, that one still plagues me, as it depends on my mood, energy level, and the weather to what sounds appealing to us both.

The majority of my choices don't have heavy consequences.  When I am faced with ones that require more thought, I am one to analyze and pray, if given the time.

Yet today, after a simple sunrise service, I've thought about nothing else but choices.

Sitting on the front row, my view was three simple wooden crosses under a sky, still streaked with black and navy, as morning began to wake.

There's a lot of focus put on the cross at Easter.  For Christians, it is a symbol of our freedom from death, the sacrifice of our Savior, but also a heavy reminder of our guilt in sin that led him there.

This morning though,my eyes shifted to the two crosses on each side.  And I was reminded how a single choice had such very different endings for the men who were with Jesus that day.

One chose life, in asking for forgiveness, moments before his death.  The other mocked Jesus and sealed his own fate.

Darkness to light.  One single choice.

As the sun began to stretch across the horizon, I noticed the glow it cast onto the cross in the middle.
At one point all I could see was light and the reminder of death had all but disappeared.

For the men on those crosses that day, they knew their time on earth was short.  Most of us don't have that foreshadowing.  But all of us have the opportunity to make the ultimate choice between everlasting life and eternal death.  Until we don't.