I haven’t written in this journal for a couple of weeks.  Been traveling. Traveling some more.  Interesting places—Alaska, Montana, Orlando, Breckenridge and Washington, DC.  In fact, I’m writing this on the flight from D.C. back to Boise.

Our nation’s capitol is an interesting place.  I find justifiable pride and inspiration in the many people and places I encounter there.  There, people past and present, have committed their lives to serve the greater good. There, places symbolizing the sacrifice and ideals that constitute the American story, populate the DC skyline.  (Check out the iPhone photo of me in front of the capitol.)

D.C.’s architecture gives testament to our national values.  Carved into the various buildings and displays are words and phrases Americans hold dear—justice, equality, under the law, liberty, freedom.  Etched in stone, our belief in the gift of freedom.  We list it as one of our inalienable rights.  Our liberty.

This country, this democratic experiment in which we live, is an amalgam of the many choices we have the privilege of making as the result of our freedom.  As free citizens we exercise choice and select our governmental leaders, our choice of vocation, our ability to own land, the friends we choose, the very lives we lead.  Washington, D.C. exists to protect and provide our freedoms, to see to it that we have the right to make choices.  Linger in the hallways of Congress long enough and you’ll hear someone advocating for their rights—their cause, their way, their view, their choice.

We have many choices in this country and that’s a very good thing.

But I’ve been thinking about all those choices, about people’s expressions of self and their rights.  And I’ve come to the conclusion, that at the most fundamental level of being we have one choice.  We are free to make that one choice.  All other rights and choices pale in comparison and importance.  Here it is.

We are free to choose God or to reject God.  To seek God or to seek to be gods.  All life hinges upon this one primary choice.  This one God-given freedom.

He gifts us with choice and invites us to choose Him.  By His design, what we choose, who we choose, shapes all of life.  Choose Him and live in the context of life as He intends for it to be lived.  Choose self, or things, and life is broken, we become victims of our own godless choice.

My trip to DC heightened my awareness of this fact—the free exercise of this fundamental choice.  It also underscored the privilege I have to serve at Northwest Nazarene University—where an entire university has made a choice too!

We choose to see everything we do and are through the lens of one choice.  We choose to be a Christ-centered university.  We believe that the world in which we live is structured and ordered by God.  Therefore, the subjects we study, the people who work here, the manner in which we design and devise our work, the way we treat and care for one another, all fall under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the One we choose to follow.

Consequently, NNU is a thoroughly exciting place to be.  Everyone who teaches and serves here has chosen to be at a place that makes all of its choices in the light of the God-choice.  We don’t choose to be a place that seeks to invent reality out of our individual likes and dislikes, self-crafted belief systems and corporate opinions.  We choose to seek and follow God, to be like His Son Jesus, enabled, through the presence of His Holy Spirit, to fulfill our God-designed destiny.  This is who we are.  This is who we choose to be.

The entire university is ordered in and around this one choice—to be His!  I hope you are making this choice too.  And for those of you who want to live within the way, the truth and the life that He intends for us to choose, come here.  Join us.  Choose to live in His way with us!