Today, choose life! Moses’ plea reminds me that I, like the Israelites, have a sacred history that has brought me to where I am today. My story too is marked by faithful and unfaithful ancestors, periods of great freedom and un-freedom, seasons of plenty and seasons of famine, acts of great trust on my part and acts of great faithlessness.
Yet this today of Moses stands ever-present, calling, pleading even, on behalf of God, to continue to choose life. All that has gone before has led me to this today, to this moment of choice.
This today is where I let go of my failings and accomplishments, my resentments and attachments, my fears and ambitions, and whatever else does not belong to me. It is simply a moment of choice, a choice to “hold fast” to the one who gives life and leads me into the fulfillment of this promise.
— Ryen Dwyer, S.J., a Chicago-Detroit province Jesuit scholastic, is currently studying philosophy at Loyola University Chicago.