One Choice, Many Ripples

A few months ago, I watched the Netflix docuseries Adolescence, and I have not stopped thinking about it since. It’s raw, emotional, and—honestly—a little too real at times. The show follows teenagers as they navigate their lives, choices, trauma, and dreams. What strikes me is not just the decisions they make, but the domino effect of those decisions. One choice—made in a moment of fear, impulse, or longing—can echo for years. Sometimes for generations.

Jeremiah 2:4–13 sounds like God’s version of that same heartbreak. It’s not fire-and-brimstone rage. It’s a lament. “What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they went far from me?” God asks, not like a punishing judge, but like a parent in the kitchen at 2 a.m., staring at the ceiling, trying to understand how everything went so sideways. “I brought you through the wilderness,” God says. “I gave you water, land, love—and you’ve traded it all for emptiness.”

It’s about betrayal, sure. But underneath it, there’s deep, aching love. That kind of holy grief only comes when you really care.

And maybe that’s why the recent tragedy at Calgary’s Commonwealth Bar has hit me so hard.

Jonas Robert Nedd Sutton a 21-year-old is dead. A 19-year-old has been charged. As a minister, I’m heartbroken. As a mother of a 19-year-old, I’m rattled.

It’s a parent’s worst fear—the kind of story you try not to read too closely because it hits too close to home. But I did read it. And I wept. For the family that lost their son. For the young man who, in one terrible moment, made a decision that will forever alter the course of his life. For all the ripples this tragedy sends out—friends, siblings, coworkers, classmates, and all the parents now hugging their kids just a little tighter.

Progressive theology doesn’t usually traffic in guilt and shame. We try not to build our spiritual lives around punishment or fear. But it does ask us to notice the weight of our choices. Not because we’ll be condemned, but because we are so deeply connected to one another. Because the line between “my life” and “your life” is blurrier than we like to admit.

Grace is real, but actions still have consequences. God doesn’t shield us from the fallout of our decisions, but God walks with us through it. God gathers the broken pieces. God cries with grieving mothers and trembling teenagers. God never gives up on any of us, even when the world says it’s too late.

In Adolescence, you see how every kid is just trying to survive their own story. Some have parents who left, some are caught in systems designed to break them, and some are trying so hard to be good that they lose sight of what being human even means. And in real life—in our city, in our community—that story plays out in real time. Sometimes with tragic consequences.

So this Sunday, I’ll be preaching on choices—not to shame, but to awaken. To remind us that every single one of us has the power to create or destroy, to hurt or to heal. And that even when we mess it up—especially when we mess it up—God is still there. Not with punishment, but with presence. Not with rejection, but with relentless love.

Because if grace doesn’t reach the darkest corners of our lives—what good is it?

Let’s be kind to each other this week. Let’s take a breath before we act. Let’s remember that our choices ripple far beyond us. And let’s trust that even in the ruins, God is still at work.