Just Choices

So…I turned 24 recently…and I’ve been thinking a lot lately about life choices...specifically, my own, and what to do with my life this year, which jobs to apply for, where to live etc. I feel like since I left school at 17, all I have done is make choices, and re-make choices. And for those that know me, I struggle just to choose what to order out at a restaurant if the menu is greater than 2 pages… But this flood of choices, is quite symbolic of my generation really…we have choices and more choices. What a blessing, and what a curse. So many of us are lost.

In November last year, I decided that I had until Christmas to figure out what I was doing this year…I feared facing the family’s ‘what are you doing this year’ question without an answer. How silly to think, against everything I’ve learnt about God’s way of working in my life, I could timetable what doors God would reveal and open to me. But God does have a plan, and as I’ve been helping Danielle Strickland write a book on Social Justice, I have been reminded how much God has shown and taught me over the last 7 years, even through the decisions that I made my for my own selfish gain, he has been able to use those experiences to teach me. Friends have asked me as I debate what path to follow, whether I would go back to working at ANZ Bank, or get a graduate position at one of the other big banks …and it is not unattractive. I enjoyed my work there, and it was well paying, challenging and fun. But now with all that God has shown and taught me, do I really have a choice to go back to living a life for my own motives? Maybe it isn’t a choice anymore…I love the idea of crossing that one off my list (how easy does that sound!?). But I’m learning that to decide to try and live a life of social justice is a decision that has to be made over and over, just as my decision to follow Christ is. It’s a choice to follow him in the hard times, when life and the world pull us in a different direction.

JustLose has been teaching me a lot over the last few months. One of the decisions I made was to only eat fair trade chocolate. I have to admit, I have broken my rule a few times, but on a whole, it has been such a good experience of disciplining my behaviour to match my beliefs … my beliefs that

1.I don’t agree with the unjust practices of the chocolate companies and

2. I DO believe in the power of consumer choices and demand side factors as a solution…

But every time someone offers me a chocolate, that is a choice I have to re-make….over and over again. So I choose the ancient path again today, the path of trying to be a person fighting for Justice, how that looks, I’m still praying to God about...But we have to remember that choice in itself is a privilege. Poverty robs people of choice and opportunity. Those that argue that women in brothels are there by choice are ignorant to the reality of poverty. I was told statistic today that was along the lines of, 80% of women interviewed in brothels in Canada said they would leave if they had alternative employment opportunities (i would take a guess at the % being higher in developing countries).

So let’s create some, maybe our choice is to give them back their right to a choice.

What do you choose?