In Moses 7, there is a heart rending moment when Enoch is shown all the world ‘for the space of many generations.’ (Moses 7:4) As Enoch witnessed the history of the world, with its wars and bloodshed and wickedness, he saw ‘that the God of heaven looked upon the residue of the people, and he wept.’ (Moses 7:28) Understandably, Enoch was greatly moved by the sight of God weeping over His children, and asked Him how He could weep when He made worlds without number and has all power and all goodness? The Lord’s answer is poignant: “…these thy brethren…are the workmanship of mine own hands…I [gave them] commandment, that they should love one another, and that they should choose me, their Father…” but they would not. (Moses 7:32-33) Even with all His power and mercy and goodness, we, His children, have the power to cause God to weep when He sees that we will not choose Him. As a consequence of our agency, and in accordance with divine plan, we get to choose whether we will follow the path He has set for us–a path promised by He who knows all things to bring us happiness now and forever–or not. Recently, President Nelson phrased it just a little differently when he said, “We can choose to let God prevail in our lives, or not. We can choose to let God be the most powerful influence in our lives, or not.” (“Let God Prevail,” Gen Conf, Oct 2020) When we choose to go our own way, God sees both the misery that is coming and the brokenness and lack we are causing ourselves now, and consequently feels great sorrow for us.
Assuming we have a desire to choose Him, to choose the happiness and knowledge He has to offer, how do we manifest that choice? What does it look like to live a life choosing God? There are likely many answers to that question and multiple ways to show our choice; at the very least I think it means that we seek His influence in our lives above all things because we know He is always good and acts for our benefit and we want to be both with Him and like Him.
Choosing God means we turn to Him instead of away from Him when we face adversity or doubt. To choose Him, we seek Him in all times-good and bad. We pray hard when things are hard, and ask for His guidance and wisdom in our lives. We don’t turn away when He doesn’t give us what we want. We listen to His voice above all others and practice patience in our learning and finding. When we do wrong, we turn to Him in repentance, confident in His mercy and willingness to let us try again. In all things, He is our source of strength, peace and vision.
We choose God when we develop a sense of wonder and gratitude for His goodness and mercy for all. We seek for Him to ‘tune [our] heart[s] to sing [His] grace’ (Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.) We then have eyes to see the wondrous ways He blesses our lives and the lives of those around us. We experience His goodness and recognize the miracles He performs in the world. We feel His love in those experiences, which builds our desire and capacity to choose Him. We trust His power and His compassion and see those things in everything around us.
As we choose God, His work is top priority in our lives. To me, this means that when we have more items on our lists to do than time, it isn’t the things of eternal value that are neglected. Worldly hobbies or pursuits take a backseat to scripture study and temple attendance when necessary. Vacation plans don’t trump Sunday worship. In our limited time here, we live with intention-choosing those things which bring us closer to our Father and reflect His will rather than our own, over those things with lesser value.
We cannot choose God without also choosing to love and serve His children. We practice mercy with one another as He has mercy on us. We seek unity with others because He has taught us that we must in order to be ‘one’ with Him. We bring peace and light and hope to the children of this world, whether or not they choose to accept it, because that is what He does.
We choose Him by seeking His light in our darkness, and seeing Him in our light.
We choose Him in reaching out in grace and encouragement to all, sharing His love.
We choose Him when we repent and freely forgive, when we seek to heal and help.
We choose Him as we search and work; believe and serve, every day.
Choose Him.
