Choice And Accountability

My daughter participated in an annual New Beginnings program that welcomes girls into our church’s Young Women group. During the event all the participants who know the organization’s theme are invited to stand and recite it. The theme includes the enumeration of eight key values that are a focus of their personal progress during the six years they spend in the group. Those values are: faith, divine nature, individual worth, knowledge, choice and accountability, good works, integrity and virtue. The Young Women leaders had asked the girls to talk about these traits as they related to the year’s theme of “embark in the service of God.”

My daughter spoke on the relationship between choice and accountability and service. She highlighted the lesson that Joshua tried to teach the Israelites. He taught them of the need to leave behind false gods that had corrupted their worship and confused their belief. He invited them to choose whom they would serve and left no doubt about his position and how he would lead his family and those who would follow his example.
“Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the Lord.
And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
Much has been made in recent days about religious fanaticism in the wake of the violence and murder perpetrated by those very few who claim to believe in God and assert that they act according to His will. I contrast those claims with two other verses of scripture that help guide me to believe whether others, who claim to act in the name of God, are truly carrying out His will.
Jesus said, “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
King Benjamin said it this way, “I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.”

We all make choices and the willing acceptance of the consequences that follow is accountability. Our greatest choice may be to decide whom we serve, for the results of those choices are eternal for us and those we serve. If we are to serve God we must serve those around us, especially the least amongst us. Let us use our service to others as the true measure of our choice to serve God. And may we all measure up as we perform unselfish acts of meaningful service.

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