Food for Thought

We had a very interesting Bible study after church today. For quite some time now I've considered Joshua 24:15b as my favorite verse: "AS for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." Our Bible study is centered on the concept of "chosen". I had been seeing my relationship with God from the point of me choosing to follow Him. Today had me looking at it from the perspective that God has chosen ME, and now it is my responsibility to decide what to do about that. We studied about God choosing Abraham. Why did God chose Abraham? Was he an especially godly person? No, actually he was the son of a pagan worshiper. He was also not especially moral and upstanding all the time when he considered his wife. When she could not have children and suggested he have a child with her servant, he didn't say, "Oh no, I could never betray our wedding vows in such a way, he just said, "Oh, OK sounds like a good idea?" When they went to Egypt because of the famine, Abraham was afraid he would be killed by Egypians so they could take his wife for themselves, so he convinced her to pretend to be his sister so he would be safe, even though it would still put her virtue in danger; the Egyptians could just take her and would treat Abraham well as her brother instead of killing him to get rid of her husband. It seems that God choses people who LACK the qualities He needs, then when the chosen trust Him, God gives them the qualities necessary for the work he wants them to do. That way God can get all the glory instead of the chosen one saying, "Of course I could do the job. After all I'm so great that God chose me." Bottom line: God chooses the most foolish to show how great are the gifts he gives to us. So, I am going to try to focus on acknowledging that God chose me (foolish, non-talented me. So what will I do about it? How will I try to respond? By being a blessing to someone.