Choices

This quote is from my favorite book at the moment, A Grace Disguised by Jerry Sittser. This book has just given words to so many things that I have been struggling with and thinking through, and also helped me to understand just a little better what it means to hope in God's work in the world and keep moving forward even as we see more and more brokenness around us. Here's what I read this evening that I found particularly challenging and simultaneously encouraging. He is addressing how we live in a world where loss and grief are inevitable:

"Choice is therefore the key. We can run from the darkness, or we can enter into the darkness and face the pain of loss. We can indulge ourselves in self-pity, or we can empathize with others and embrace their pain as our own. We can run away from sorrow and drown it in addictions, or we can learn to live with sorrow. We can nurse wounds of having been cheated in life, or we can be grateful and joyful, even though there seems to be little reason for it. We can return evil for evil, or we can overcome evil with good. It is this power to choose that adds dignity to our humanity and gives us the ability to transcend our circumstances, thus releasing us from living as mere victims. These choices are never easy. Though we can and must make them, we will make them more often than not only after much agony and struggle." (46)