“You did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit” John 15:16

Too Much of Everything

Not choose – Os Guinness makes a dramatic point about modern life:  there are too many choices.  We are overwhelmed with too much of everything.  A moment’s reflection (and that’s all we have in such a busy world) drives home the terrible truth.  We just can’t keep up.  We can’t do all we should.  We can’t see all the people we should.  We can’t get to all the places we should.  We can’t manage all we should.  We are running, running, running around the wheel that never stops.  If New York is the city that never sleeps, we are the age that never rests.  Clocks are the contemporary versions of golden idols, controlling our lives with every passing second.  We serve the time master and he is cruel indeed.

What does Jesus have to say about this?  He cuts right through the frantic temporal obsession.  We do not choose! In the real world, we are not presented with endless appeals of choices.  Jesus chooses us.  We do not choose him.  We do not have a “Jesus” option.  He is not competing for our very limited attention.  He stops the entire choice process with this declaration:  “You did not choose me.”

The Greek word is revealing.  Eklego, a combination of ek (out) and lego (commonly, “to say” but by extension “to select”, “to choose out from among”).  The emphasis is on speaking a word that sets apart one thing from another.  Jesus speaks us out of the world and to himself.  Just as God created the heavens and the earth by His word, so Jesus calls us into existence with him by his words.  I don’t create myself.  He does.  His act of calling me out is the act of creating who I am, who I really am, apart from all the tumult of too much of everything.  He calls me out, away from the overwhelming god of temporal domination.

Has Jesus chosen you?  Has He called you out?  Then the direction of your life is not “How can I make the right choice among so many choices?”  It is something quite different.  It is singular, simple, straightening.  If he chooses me, my question is this:  What has He chosen me for?  It’s not about me and my options.  Those were laid to rest when He called me out.  It’s about His purpose for calling me.  I no longer have a choice.  I have a responsibility to respond to His choice.  My life is about following instructions, not about deciding among options.

Lord, here I am.  What would you have me do?