Books ignited my imagination when I was growing up. The turn of each page brought new worlds to dive into and fascinating people to meet. They spurred my love of adventure that catapulted me off the page and into explorations of my own.

One type of book I read often as a kid was the “choose your own adventure” story. At the end of each chapter, the reader was given a choice. For each choice you made at that juncture of the story, you turned to a particular chapter. It made me feel as if I was actively participating in the unfolding of the plot.

The decisions we make on a daily basis clearly have great impact. They set the course of our lives and have the ability to affect how our children, our families, our friends and our coworkers make decisions. 

Often, and usually hilariously, I made a choice that would lead to something like, “Unfortunately, taking the land route to your destination led to a giant boulder rolling down the hill and crushing you to death.” (It seemed to parallel my playing the Oregon Trail computer game where my party of pioneer settlers always seemed to contract dysentery or have our raft bashed to pieces while floating down the Columbia River.)

No matter. Recovery was simply as easy as restarting the game or making a different choice at the end of each chapter. 

Recently I was thinking how life is really one big choose your own adventure story. At key points in our lives we make choices that lead us down different paths, some good and some bad. But ultimately, there are only two paths that we can take: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). God is giving everyone an opportunity to live a life of making better choices, some now and some later (2 Peter 3:9; 1 Peter 4:17; Revelation 20:4-6; Matthew 12:41-42). 

We all have to make the daily choices that lead us closer to one final destination or the other. God, who created us to live our choose-your-own adventure life story, makes it evident which decisions He is hoping we will make. His words echo down to us as strongly as they did when He first spoke them to the ancient nation of Israel, whom He wanted to be a model nation for the rest of the world: “I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19). 

The decisions we make on a daily basis clearly have great impact. They set the course of our lives and have the ability to affect how our children, our families, our friends and our coworkers make decisions. 

Thankfully God does not leave us existentially wringing our hands at the weight of such decisions. He points out clearly through personal narratives, through commands and through prophecy, how to make these right choices. All that is found within the pages of the greatest choose-your-own-adventure book ever written: the Bible. In it we can find people whose chapters ended with death, and those who have a future that is awash in hope and who inspire us to continue down the right path (Hebrews 12:1-2).

Let’s all keep our noses in the Book that will show us how we can make the decisions that will lead us to the best possible ending for our life’s adventure. That’s the daily choice we can make that will make sure we have the knowledge and the wisdom to make better choices in each chapter of our lives.