You Have the Power to Choose

Very often we forget that we have the power to choose.

 "Even the sparrow has found a home, 

and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young--even Your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God." Psalm 84:3

Out of the same mud in which we could dig ourselves a hole to hide forever,

 the cheerful swallow makes herself a nest in the corner eaves of that little house on the prairie--from which there is no end of noisy singing from all the little birds hungry for breakfast.

 When you cannot see the trees for the grass...

 and when you relate more to these dried up sticks of last year's mullein,

 you can choose to mull with the mullein, 

or flit busily with the humming bees beside the sunny flowers.

 You can look for holes to crawl into (preferably beside cow pies)--

 or bloom where you are planted--even though it be by the same cow pie and gopher hole.

 You can focus on the thorns in that little patch of scrubby trees where you like to sit in God's presence,

 or you can lift your eyes to the fragrant blooms that attract the busy little insects which are in there somewhere.

 You can choose this perspective--this side of the tree with its dried up reeds...

 or that side, with a little spot of grass and a low spot--

where you can just sit low at His feet...

and just be. 

Where you can just say, "Lord, for lack of words, it's just me coming to You today."

 So you can be still and know that He is God, 

or you can also remember that even the leaves of the tree along the path back home are clapping their hands in praise to Him.

 And the gentle horses pause their daily cropping to watch the lone little lady walking home again--

remembering that even in this, too,

this situation where it looks like I have no choice,

or only a choice between two unbearable and impossible things

I have the power to choose. 

Sometimes I can choose to believe that there is a third alternative

that no one ever thought of before. 

And sometimes that third alternative is simply--GOD.