I’ve shared before about measuring success. However, goals are met through a series of individual decisions. Turn right or turn left? Go to this place or don’t? Plan a trip a day early in hopes you can connect with someone you haven’t yet received confirmation? Drive a long way in order to meet someone for 90 minutes?
Such was the case this week. Do I drive 6 hours each way in one day to meet with students for lunch at a campus that has not had strong leaders in some time? Will it be worth it? 12 hours is a long time driving. There’s definitely risk and sacrifice in such a choice. Moreover, will anyone know that I did it and whether it was worth it or not?
So many choices we make in life come down to little decisions where we ask ourselves, “Is it worth it?” In the Bible, there are endless decisions people make that we will never know–or hardly consider. One I recently came across was with David & a guy named Aranuah:
22 David said to him, “Let me have the site of your threshing floor so I can build an altar to the Lord, that the plague on the people may be stopped. Sell it to me at the full price.”
23 Araunah said to David, “Take it! Let my lord the king do whatever pleases him. Look, I will give the oxen for the burnt offerings, the threshing sledges for the wood, and the wheat for the grain offering. I will give all this.”
24 But King David replied to Araunah, “No, I insist on paying the full price. I will not take for the Lord what is yours, or sacrifice a burnt offering that costs me nothing.”
The New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), 1 Ch 21:22–24.
How can you pass up free stuff?! (Med & dental students don’t!) But David did. He knew there had to be a sacrifice. While not all decisions require a sacrifice, so many “right” decisions do, whether time, money, effort exerted, fear of repercussion, going against popular opinion, etc. “I don’t want to” is easily justified in my head, but “do I?” is the moment of discernment. It’s that fork-in-the-road moment that can last for weeks or in a millisecond.
Humorously, I think of Yogi Bera’s quote,
“When you meet a fork in the road, take it.”
If only it was that easy! Thank you for responding to God’s prompt to support the ministry of CMDA in the West and the efforts through students, communities, and more. You’ve taken the fork–and taken it–and I’m glad you have!
