Right Decisions

Someone famous has said, "important decisions are best made in cemeteries".  I've made a few in that venue.  More often though, I've found I want to “sleep on” life changing decisions before making them.  So many “knee jerk”, “from the hip” decisions come back to haunt us!  How many of us find ourselves looking back over the years and seeing them littered with decisions we would love to revisit… love to redo… love to have considered just a little longer before having made them?

Not long ago I found myself sitting with my stepfather watching a number of parachutists fall from a highflying plane enroute to the landing field before us.  I commented how ‘talking the plunge’ in like fashion is something I plan to do sometime before I retire. One thing led to another in our conversation and he was ready to leap out of the plane with me the very next day!

But as the afternoon turned into night and the morning sun and coffee warmed our bodies the next day, my stepfather had second thoughts.  You see, he had time to consider more fully what complications recent heart problems might bring to such a jump from the sky.  To his credit, however, my stepfather not only had the time – he took the time to make a good decision. Sitting on the back porch that morning pondering his action of rethinking his earlier decision got me to thinking.

Truth be told, most decisions don’t need so much to be made quickly as they need to be made well! And, that made me remember what Jesus once told his disciples … “Don’t judge by appearances only but make a right judgment.”

I don’t always make the best of decisions.  Actually, over the 52 winters of my life I've made some award winning odious ones that are not easy to live with. My stepfather would be the first to admit that not all of his decisions have been good ones either.  Yet I'm thinking he got this one right because he took his time before committing. 

It’s a New Year.  Perhaps a good resolution for all of us would be to make a habit of being somewhat slow to make important decisions … to consider well the things we do before we do them… to make a habit of making right decisions – no matter how slow they are to make. What do you think?