Did you choose your God?

There's a 20th century idea that people choose their religion, or choose which god to follow. This idea does have some truth (see Joshua 24:15 for example), but today's reading from the psalms gives another perspective:

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,
the people he chose for his inheritance.

Psalm 33:12

It doesn't say, "Blessed is the nation... who made the Right Choice by choosing Him"; it says that he is the one making the choice. Come to think of it, this idea -- that God chooses people, not the other way round -- comes up in the first book of the Bible (in Genesis 18:19, we read that he chose Abraham) and the last (Revelation 17:14, chosen followers). Jesus talks about the elect in Matthew 24 and in John 15 he says explicitly, "You did not choose me, but I chose you..." And so does the Apostle Paul (Ephesians 1:4 for example).

And yet, there was a day when I decided to follow Jesus. How does that work, I wonder? Somehow God chose me -- and if you follow him, he chose you, too -- and at some point we get the experience of seeming to choose him as well.

Is that cool or what?