In 1949, African American theologian Howard Thurman published Jesus and the Disinherited, a book that contributed to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King theology of nonviolent resistance.  

“Following Jesus’s “love-ethic,” Thurman taught, “breaks the cycle of fear and hatred. Real love does not mean passive submission; it means active, courageous goodwill that can disarm the oppressor and preserve the soul of the oppressed.”

I have a thin book of Thurman’s devotions I often read to begin church meetings. The deep insights of these devotions speak to the challenges we all face as we discern what it means to follow Jesus in the complexities of our lives.

Thurman says, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

To come alive amounts to an ongoing process of making choices, which add up to something more than each individual decision.  We are always making decisions, Thurman says, and it is a miracle when these decisions lead us to life.

Always Making Decisions
Howard Thurman

Always, I am making decisions. There are some decisions that are deliberately negative. They cut across everything in me that is positive and affirming. They may involve much or as little as far as my immediate destiny is concerned. It is a crucial thing to come to a point of decision, to weigh causes of action, to sense the meaning of direction. It is in such a moment that man knows whether he is on the side of life or death, and the choice is his to make. To affirm life is to accept growth, to accept challenge, to move with all one’s full-orbed intent in response to the deepest that stirs within. Then the miracle takes place. The deepest thing in man somehow makes contact with the deepest things in life. And he knows that the decision is right. The decision is on the side of life and not death. Of course, a life giving decision may be difficult. It may cause much heartache and disturbance, even upheaval, but the issue is never in doubt. It is a terrible thing to make a decision which one knows somewhere in the profound recesses of one being is against life.

Teach us to overcome our fear of life, and in that freedom, may we learn to understand life, and in our understanding of life, to love life. Steady us our father, that we may cast our vote for life and not against life. 

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my rock and I my redeemer.

May God bless and guide us all in our miraculous, live-giving decisions.