Barb Totterdell December 17th 2017 ~ Choices

I had a couple of weeks holiday last month and drove up the coast with a good friend. Though I’ve been in WA for almost 7 years, I’d never been north of Kalbarri before. And even my few trips north of Perth had been very brief and often for my previous work. The Pinnacles, Kalbarri, Monkey Mia, Ningaloo. . . what an amazing State we live in and those are just a few of the fantastic things we get to enjoy!While I was away I reflected on the choices that we have to make in life. We all know and experience living in a culture that has choice overload – the aisles of our supermarket is just one example of that! (And how much choice we face at this time of year!) Even on holiday there were dozens of choices to make – including which of the many things we could stop and look at, where we would eat, what we would listen to. As we made choices, particularly about what we would do and wouldn’t do (we were covering a fair bit of ground over a week), I reflected on how that is like our lives - so many options and so often feeling that there is so little time. (Really helpful research and written material has been produced on how we can help our choice and decision overload. Engaging with some of that can be extremely beneficial. It certainly has been for me.)This led me to reflect on how Jesus lived and His relationship with His Father. Certainly, the way His culture operated was different from ours but there is so much He could have done. He had plenty of choices to make: where to go, who to spend time with, where to speak, who to heal. He knew what His priority was: to spend time with His Father, to listen to Him. He chose what He would do coming from that place.And so I was challenged to continue to do likewise. How might our lives be different if we made choices based on spending time with God and being led more strongly by the Spirit as we live our lives? Might we feel less stressed by the choice overload, more content with our decisions and have more impact on the world?As we celebrate the miracle of Jesus entering into our world, let’s follow His example of abiding in the Father, doing what we see the Father doing and seeing the fruit that will come as a result, in our lives and the lives of those around us. Blessings,Barb