Skip to main content

Hasty Decisions

 Desire without knowledge is not good— how much more will hasty feet miss the way! (Proverbs 19:2)

Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, and do not share in the sins of others. Keep yourself pure. (I Timothy 5:22)

          Years ago, when I was shopping for a car, I had it down to two. I talked to my father about it, and he kept humming and hawing. I wasn’t doing any better. I’m not a car person. For me, it needs to have a CD player, an air conditioner, and run. Those are the non-negotiables. After discussing things with him and not reaching a conclusion, I realized that we had two problems. I don’t want to make a wrong decision, and he didn’t want to make any decision. I finally asked him which he would get if he were getting it for himself, and that’s why we got.

          I like to make right decisions, and I hate to make arbitrary decisions. This or that, here or there? If it doesn’t matter, what does it matter? That’s part of the reason I like to randomly generate characters for my stories. Most of the time, it doesn’t matter, but I need to know.

          In addition to wanting to make the right decision, I like decisions to be made. Now. That’s one of the things I like about bulk cooking and meal planning. You don’t have to decide what you’re going to eat. The decision has already been made. Of course, if you get to that day and really don’t want what’s on the menu, you can change it. If I don’t make a decision now, I end up on a gerbil wheel, gnawing on it incessantly and becoming less and less able to arrive at the right decision.

          Unfortunately, making quick, gut-level decisions – while sometimes necessary – is often unwise. Haste makes waste. Scripture seems to agree with that chestnut. Wisdom doesn’t hurry. I tend to think of myself as being incapable of not hurrying. That’s one of the things that drives me bats about gardening. I plant seeds, and they are supposed to be growing within a week or I’m grinding my teeth and trying to figure out what else to plant there. And five weeks later I have two different plants growing. Oops.

          That’s one of the things about making conscious decisions. It forces one to slow down, to be aware of making the decision at the very least. The more important the decision, the longer we should take to make it.

          The other thing that bugs me about making decisions is that I want God to make it clear what decision to make. A good decision is the one that God picks, except when it’s not the one I’d pick. Oh, I know that God’s choices are the best choices, but that doesn’t change the fact that sometimes I lie to myself when I say I want to do the right thing. I want to do what’s right for me – according to me. I want God to pat me on the back and say, “Good choice!”

          And often, God doesn’t make the “good choice” clear, especially not as fast as I want Him to. I suspect it’s a way He causes our faith to grow. We have to make up our own minds and move forward, trusting Him as we get out of the boat to walk on water. The goal may not be the choice. It might be the faith.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Way, The Truth, and The Life

              Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me . (John 14:6)           If “I am the gate of the sheep…I am the good shepherd” from chapter 10 is a double whammy, this verse is a triple whammy. And its first victim is the notion that any other so-called god was acceptable or the same as Jesus. He, and He alone is the way, the truth, and the life, and the only way to get to the Father. There is no other Savior, or Redeemer, according to Jesus. Now, to be fair, other religions will claim that their religion or god(s) are the only way. That is the nature of gods and of religions. If this and that are equally good and agree on what’s necessary, then this and that are the same thing, so there’s no need to from the other to one. If that’s the case, then why speak against the other or promote the one? There’s a song I’ve been listening to i...
Post a Comment
Read more