God says, “I am offering you life or death, blessing or curse. Choose life, then, so that you and your descendants may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19).
“Choose life.” That’s God’s call for us, and there is not a moment in which we do not have to make that choice. Life and death are always before us. In our imaginations, our thoughts, our words, our gestures, our actions … even in our non-actions. This choice for life starts in a deep interior place. Underneath very life-affirming behavior I can still harbor death-thoughts and death-feelings. The most important question is not “Do I kill?” but “Do I carry a blessing in my heart or a curse?”
— Henri Nouwen in Bread for the Journey
Father, we weave a tangled web in our interior lives. On the outside we look kind and loving, but on the inside we are the spider laying in wait for her next meal. Forgive us. Teach us new patterns that carry blessings to others, not death.
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