Knowing When To Go

There are times that I wish that we were wired like geese and salmon - that when the time to make a change or go somewhere else was upon us, we would just know it.

There is a sense in which I often struggle with making a decision - not just the fact that I often feel that I have made bad ones (which can be debated, I suppose, at a later date), but that I worry that I am making the right one - the one God want me to make.

Which is somewhat remarkable of itself, because if left unchecked that essentially become soothsaying - looking for signs in the stars, flights of birds, and sheep's livers for an indication of action to take.

Gary Friesen, in his book Decision Making and the Will of God, divides decisions into moral and non-moral. The non-moral - those not directly informed by God's commands and precepts - are those that He leaves to us, so long as we break no moral laws in doing so.

Is it that I am uncomfortable with this level of responsibility - or possibility? Am I looking to have God as my "escape hatch", my ability to say "I didn't really do that myself - it was God"?

How do I merge God's omnipotence and control of every aspect of the universe with my responsibility to choose (and yes, I know wiser minds than I have dealt with such - and failed)?

How, I really suppose, does one grow up and not continue to list the same things in one's goal list and "should do" list year after year?