choosing – Barnstorming

A Choice of Light or Darkness

April 28, 2025 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

The issue is now clear. It is between light and darkness and everyone must choose his side.
~G. K. Chesterton, on his death bed

God is going to invade, all right:
but what is the good of saying you are on His side then,
when you see the whole natural universe melting away
like a dream and something else –
something it never entered your head to conceive –
comes crashing in;
something so beautiful to some of us
and so terrible to others that
none of us will have any choice left?

For this time it will be God without disguise;
something so overwhelming that it will strike
either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature.

It will be too late then to choose your side.

There is no use saying you choose to lie down
when it has become impossible to stand up.
That will not be the time for choosing:
it will be the time when we discover
which side we really have chosen,
whether we realized it before or not.

Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side.
~C.S. Lewis – from Mere Christianity

…our hands have always been able to heal as much as harm.
…since the dawn of humanity, each of us contains three people—
the angel, the demon, and the one who decides which we will obey.
~Billy Coffey

It shouldn’t take plunging into a profound darkness,
swallowed in a pit of sadness and sorrow
to experience God’s immense capacity for love and compassion,
but that is when our need for light and forgiveness is greatest.

It should not take sin and suffering to remind us
life is precious and worthy of our protection,
no matter how tempted we are to choose otherwise.

We are created,
from the beginning,
in the beginning,
with the capacity to choose sides between darkness and light.

We choose too often to remain cloaked in darkness.

Our God chooses to shine the light of His Creation,
to conquer our darkness through illuminating grace,
dispersing our shadows, suffering the deepest darkness on our behalf
to guarantee we are eternally worthy of His loving protection.

How then will we choose when He so clearly chooses us?

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Our Chance to Choose

September 8, 2019September 8, 2019 barnstormingblog1 Comment

We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God.
The world is crowded with Him.
He walks everywhere incognito.
And the incognito is not always easy to penetrate.
The real labor is to remember to attend.
In fact to come awake.
Still more to remain awake.
~C.S. Lewis from “Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer”

God is going to invade, all right:
but what is the good of saying you are on his side then,
when you see the whole natural universe
melting away like a dream and something else –
something it never entered your head to conceive –
comes crashing in;
something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others
that none of us will have any choice left?

For this time it will be God without disguise;
something so overwhelming that it will strike
either irresistible love
or irresistible horror
into every creature.
It will be too late then to choose your side.

There is no use saying you choose to lie down
when it has become impossible to stand up.
That will not be the time for choosing:
it will be the time when we discover
which side we really have chosen,
whether we realized it before or not.
Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side.
~C.S. Lewis from Mere Christianity

The older I get, the more I recognize the need to be alert and awake to the presence of God in the crowded world around me. It doesn’t come naturally. We humans have an attention deficit, choosing to focus inwardly on self and ignoring the rest. If it isn’t for me, or like me, or about me, it somehow is not worthy of my consideration.

We wear blinders, asleep, unaware we must choose an incognito God;
we think His invisible immensity must be obvious, like a lightning flash.

And so – He has come and walked among us in plain sight.
No longer incognito.
The time to choose has come.

photo of lightning over Anacortes, Washington from Komonews.com

I come from Pacific Northwest farmers going back four generations: the daughter of teachers, married to a son of farmers. We have raised three children who are making a difference in the world in their professional lives and as people of faith.

While keeping my eyes and heart open to the extraordinary things around me, I have worked over forty years as a family physician as well as a steward of the small farm we call home.

What I harvest in words or pictures finds its way here.
I welcome your messages and comments sent to emilypgibson@gmail.com

…whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. … And the God of peace will be with you. Philippians 4: 8 -9

What is my only comfort in life and in death? That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.
~Heidelberg Catechism

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
~Mary Oliver

To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.
~ T.S. Eliot

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To live is so startling, it leaves little room for other occupations.
~Emily Dickinson

I believe in God as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
~ C. S. Lewis

Remember this. When people choose to withdraw far from a fire, the fire continues to give warmth, but they grow cold. When people choose to withdraw far from light, the light continues to be bright in itself but they are in darkness. This is also the case when people withdraw from God.
~ Augustine

Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields…Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.
~ Mary Oliver

The seed is in the ground. Now may we rest in hope while darkness does its work.
~ Wendell Berry

Nothing will sustain you more potently than the power to recognize in your humdrum routine the true poetry of life.~ Sir William Osler

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
~George Eliot’s final sentence in Middlemarch

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
~ E.B. White

Geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, clear, in the ancient faith: what we need is here. And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye clear. What we need is here.~~ “The Wild Geese” Wendell Berry

Let it come, as it will, and don’t be afraid. God does not leave us comfortless, so let evening come.
~ Jane Kenyon from “Let Evening Come”

You can only come to the morning through the shadows.~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Look for what you notice but no one else sees. ~Rick Rubin

If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for. ~ Thomas Merton

This life therefore is not righteousness,
but growth in righteousness,
not health but healing,
not being but becoming,
not rest but exercise.
We are not yet
what we shall be,
but we are growing toward it.
The process is not finished
but it is going on.
This is not the end
but it is the road.
~Martin Luther

Ten times a day something happens to me like this – some strengthening throb of amazement – some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.
~ Mary Oliver

It is not your love that sustains the marriage —
but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

She has done what she could…
~Mark 14:8

What do you mean? Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good on this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?~ J. R. R. Tolkien from The Hobbit

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