To Choose Again



Dear Eugene,

If we are given the choice to choose all over again, are we going to choose any differently than how we have already chosen to live?

Given the chance to choose the kind of bubble-tea we want, we are free to decide.  We are also free to imagine a single mother of three living off a bank account now carrying a balance not enough to pay for a bubble-tea, not even before tax, not even small size, but that is the sort of freedom we rarely, if ever, choose to exercise.

If the choice is presented us, usually more readily this time of the year, we probably wouldn't mind making ourselves answerable to the obscenity of helplessness, however abstractly: to fill a shoe-box, hand in an "imperishable" food (as if there ever is one), free our closet of items that are needful enough for the needy but no longer nearly good enough for ourselves and our truly loved ones, the ones who shall never taste despair under our auspices and fine management.

Once the choice is made, we are ready to move on.  Our imagination needs not be engaged; in fact, it must be stopped on its track, killed off.  For imagination lingers and loiters around, but our sympathy can spare no time and space for it to take shape and make home in us.  There's only so much we can do about others' undoing.  The mother and her three children must remain faceless.  We have our own share of sorrow to wallow in.  Our bubble-tea is ready for pick up.

Christmas is about a king who chose to dwell among the poor, to linger and loiter and make home in our homelessness.  To know Him is to choose again.

And be free to choose differently.

Yours, Alex

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