The good and the better.

Teach Me Your Ways http://www.benandhannahdunnett.com

Jeremiah 6 v 16

Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.

Recently I had a difficult decision to make. It was difficult because it wasn’t a choice between good and bad. This may have been easier as I’ve enough experience to know that outright bad choices are not good for me. Don’t pat an angry dog. Don’t eat too much cake. Caffeine after 4pm. None of it is good for me, so I walk as far away from them as possible.

Instead this was a choice between two seemingly good things … and it was so hard!

Now, I am quite a reflective person; I like to think about and talk about difficult choices with others. So I talked with people I trust. I told them my dilemma, my options. We discussed the pros and cons of each choice. It was amazing. They listened. Shared with me their opinions and insights. Each time I felt encouraged, guided. I now knew what to do!

But it also created a problem. It seemed that everyone had a different opinion. One day It would seem that one pathway was right. The next day it seemed that the same applied to the other pathway. I had lists for and against. I had Bible verses for and against. I was like a well versed lawyer, able to argue both ways. But I didn’t have peace. Nothing seemed to settle.

I thought the pressure of the deadline for the decision would help. It would become clear. I thought it would all leap out at me and there, on the wall, would be the writing directing me which way to go. But it didn’t happen. Why was it all so hard?

In desperation I did what I should have done first. Stopped. I stopped talking. I stopped calculating. I stopped straining my eyes to find an answer. I just stopped. And I stopped and sat quiet with Him. I stopped and sat quiet with Him, with my Bible on my lap. I asked Him for the ancient path; the path that would bring rest for my soul.

As I sat quiet, I remembered my journal, my notepad that has lots of scribbles. Sometimes they are just me writing out my thoughts, frustrations and joys. Sometimes it’s a doodle. There are lots me writing my signature over and over when I cannot get the words out. Sometimes it’s a written prayer. Me asking Him. Him sometimes speaking back to me. Mostly just a still time, to ponder.

I read back through my entries earlier in the year. I had some notes I had made in Lent where I had followed Radio 4’s Ignatius Loyola Retreat. I had listened to Father Dermot Preston and Mary O ‘Duffin’s sermon on Christ’s temptation in the wilderness. He said ‘most choices in life our life are between good and better’. He reminded listeners of the 3 temptations posed to Jesus by the Devil. The last temptation was so obviously bad – he asks Jesus to ‘fall and worship’ him. There was no way Jesus would ever do this. But the first is ‘falsely innocent’ – ‘turn these stones to bread’. Surely this was not so bad a bad thing to do? Jesus was hungry after 40 day fast. But Father Dermot pointed out that the choice was between the seemingly good and the better. A seemingly ‘good’ choice would miss the better and ‘dislocate an integrity in the core of His heart’.

My choice was the same. Not quite on the same grandeur of Matthew 4, but something of the same. I needed not the good answer, but the better one. The one that rang true with the integrity that God had put in the core of my heart. I stilled myself, and asked Him for the better path, the ancient path where I would find rest for my soul. And in the quietness, just me and Him, He whispered the better way.