During one of our recent coffee morning conversations with friends, someone mentioned buffet meals in restaurants, but it struck a more profound thought: Life is like a buffet table.
Everything beneath the sky is laid out before us, and there are so many choices and possibilities. And just like at a buffet, while everything might be available, not everything is beneficial. Though we have different tastes and priorities, we have a responsibility to choose what nourishes us, what harms us, and what sustains us. Life, too, asks of us the same wisdom: to choose well and live intentionally.
The buffet also raises a puzzling but profound question: given the same opportunities, why do people make such different choices? It’s astonishing, sometimes unsettling, to see the diversity of decisions even when the options are identical. Our choices reveal our priorities, our values, and our hearts.
Freedom is a tremendous gift. But what a responsibility it carries! The freedom demands responsibility.
As we enter Holy Week—a time of reflection, surrender, and awe—we are invited to consider the greatest choice ever made: the choice of Christ to go to the cross. In his book He Chose the Nails, Max Lucado writes, “Knowing His last deeds would be forever pondered, don’t you think Jesus chose them carefully? Deliberately? Of course, He did. There were no accidents that day. Jesus’ last moments were not left up to chance. God chose the path; He selected the nails”. And that cross now stands as a symbol that challenges us: How do we use our freedom?
Deuteronomy 30:19 reminds us of the divine call: “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.”
And in the background of our thoughts, we might also hear the whisper of Robert Frost:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference. Amen.
Prayer
Generous God, we thank you for the buffet of blessings you lay before us each day, the gifts seen and unseen, big and small. Help us to pause and choose wisely. Grant us the grace to use our freedom with responsibility, to walk in the way of Christ. In this Holy Week, may we be drawn closer to the cross, and to the heart of the One who chose us, even before we chose him. Amen.