"Live" | Reflection by Murray Harrison

“I have set before you life and death…. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live… love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him.” [Deuteronomy 30: 19-20] “The one(s) who conquer… I will never blot (their)… name out of the book of life.” [Revelation 3:5]

Whenever I peruse the world’s “news” – especially over the past three years – words and images of death abound! As with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the nation of Israel – and by extension, Humankind – has been warned that we must choose between life and death for our respective individual and shared destinies, temporal and Eternal. Moment by moment we must choose – in all aspects of our respective individual and corporate lives – in the supposed “least”, most mundane of circumstance – through omissive and commissive actions – by our very words and the tone in which we express them. Indeed   “…every idle word…” shall be accounted; “Death and life are in the power of the tongue….” [Prv. 18:21 / James 3:5-12 / Matt. 12:36] 

There is implicit caution against having one’s name “blotted out” of the Book of Life; we are bidden to “overcome” by choosing the “narrow (and difficult) way” [Matt 7:13-14]; we are admonished to “love the Lord y(our) God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him.”  We must uphold, celebrate and foster goodness as we are given opportunity and led by the Holy Spirit. We must strain our focus toward Jerusalem, and to “…whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”  [Philippians 4:8]

"Hawaii Flowers" photo courtesy of a member of Shalom UCC Congregation; her late husband planted the garden as a "place of peaceful communion with the Father."