Choosing life or death

I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then...

Practically every choice we make in life involves choosing between life and death. It may not seem that way, but consequences have a way of coming back and blowing up in our faces years after that first seemingly inconsequential poor choice that reaped immediate, big rewards, or so ims. 

Take me, for instance, I ate a hash brown for breakfast knowing it was a poor choice, but it offered me instant gratification. I'm on vacation, it's allowed, was my excuse. It is now so easy for me to keep making excuses and end up eating unhealthily over the next few days, and I may continue to do so after my break, for a pattern has already been set. 

Why did I pick food as an example? Wisdom and temperance may be easier to exercise when it comes to ethical issues where good or bad choices are more clear-cut, but when it comes to the temple of God, the bodiy, we tend to unwisely pick death quite often. 

How many good Christians I know who can't fast? It requires great discipline and self-mastery which ihelp us make good choices in many other areas of our lives. Given that it's Lent, fasting at least once a week may not be a bad idea. And on the other days, a healthy diet and some exercise will also mean we choose life. We choose to take care of our bodias we should. 

To run the good race requires stamina, endurance and focus. We need to be triathletes, with multiple skills, if we want to serve God as we desire, to be strong and ready to go the full distance.So choose health and fitness today, choose life, as part of your plan to be a good disciple of Christ. If you don't feel good in your body, it is just so much harder to be good, and to do good.

It's the events in our lives that shape us but the choies in our lives that define us. - Detective Mac Taylor, CSI: NY