Choose Life

It was beautiful, yet when I got out of the car I could smell the rot.

The Salton Sea is beautiful, but the shores of this stagnant body of water near Salvation Mountain is littered with ghost towns, dead fish, and a rank smell. The Salton Sea has existed as a freshwater lake, a saltwater lake and a dry lake bed over an estimated last three million years. The current rendition was created in the 1905 when engineers made a mistake with the flow of the Colorado River and it broke out of its banks and flowed into California’s Imperial and Coachella Valleys.

In the 1950s developers decided to build some resorts along the shores of California’s largest lake. However, insufficient fresh water from a major water source, salinity, different algae blooms, and run off from the local agricultural fields caused the fish to die off in large quantities, adding to the rank smell. (I Googled the smell!)

Salton Sea is also what I learned from Wikipedia to be endorheic basin, which means water comes in but doesn’t flow out. It pretty much only evaporates.

Our first morning in California we received notification that we would likely be moving to Huntsville, AL. I will say that it was a bit of a shock. John has had several jobs in the northern Virginia area over the years and we hadn’t been asked to relocate. He also hadn’t applied for the job, his boss had called him and asked him to take it. We knew for several reasons that this is what God wanted us to do.

As I have had a few weeks now to reflect on the changes in my life, I do see my time in NOVA to be one of growth and transformation. Areas of my life that were dry lake beds are now full and thriving. I realize I have a choice now. I could certainly stay where I am, which is not where God wants me now, or I can go where God leads. I do think if I don’t, I could do some continued good work, growth, and transformation where I am, but eventually I would dry up. I would be surviving on the past living water given to me by God, not going where the living water is now.

I also would become a spiritual endorheic basin, taking in what God gives me, but not letting what growth I have gained pass through to others as God had planned.

I don’t know what Huntsville, AL will bring. I don’t know God’s plans for me are in ministry. I really don’t know much at all! I am actually surprisingly and shockingly OK with it! I know God is with me and will use this to show me his mercy and grace. I know I will find life wherever God is!

See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. (Deut. 30:15-20, NRSV)

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