WHICH WAY TO GO?

The late, great philosopher Yogi Berra once opined, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Well, of course! We’ve all been there in our lives. We come to a point where we have to make a decision on what to do, which way to go, which option to choose. We can’t just stand there and gape. We have to make a decision and hope and pray that it is the right one, that we take the correct fork in the road.

How do we know what to do? Sometimes the answer is clear and we have no doubts about what to do. But not always given all the uncertainties in life. Even when we truly believe we made the right decision, events can happen that prevent the outcome that we had hoped. Perhaps we can never know for sure that we are taking the right fork in the road, but we have to take one anyway.

So how do we move on in quiet confidence even, with some trepidation of course? There’s an old African proverb that might help. “If you keep your head and heart going in the right direction, you won’t have to worry about your feet.” Exactly! My Mom used to tell us, “Use your head” after we had done something foolish, made the wrong choice. It was too late to undo what happened. She was just reminding us that if we had indeed used our head, we wouldn’t have done what we did.

Managers and coaches always tell their players the same thing: “Keep you head in the game.” When they do not, bad things happen. So, too, in life. If we keep using our head, keeping it in the game of life, if you will, we will more often than not make the right decision, take the right fork in the road.

But sometime more is also decided. If our heart is not into what we are doing, we will get into trouble, make wrong decisions. Athletes often retire earlier than what might seem normal because they will tell us that their hearts aren’t in it any more. People change jobs even though they are doing great work where they are because their heart isn’t in it any more. They need to move on and take another fork in their road in life.

When our head and our heart into what we are doing, where we are going, more often than not our feet will take us in the right direction. Yes, given the fact that we are not in total control of our life, the road we take, the decisions we make, might not turn out the way we had anticipated or hoped. That’s simply life. But even when that happened, what we discovered was that we made the best of it.

That is all we can hope for and, I believe, all that God asks of us or we can ask of ourselves. If we use our head, keep it in the game, and if we put our heart and soul into what we are doing and how we are living, more often than not our feet will take us where we need to go. And even when we do take the wrong road, somehow our head and our heart will get us back onto the right path – as we have all learned from experience.

LEARNING FROM OUR MISTAKES

As we grow older, there are times, probably too, too many, when we reflect back on the mistakes we made, we say to ourselves, “If I only knew then what I know now”. But by now, of course, it is too late to undo the mistakes, the wrongs, the foolish decisions we made back then. We have had to live with the consequences whatever those consequences have been. We had no choice. We couldn’t undo what we did.

We move on in life for that is how life is. To be sure there are times when we get stuck in the present as the present moves into the future and becomes the past. Something happened and we can’t seem to move on. Whether that something was of our own making or because it was something that happened to us, we got stuck. And we stayed stuck until somehow in some way we were able to move on.

Hopefully, when we finally did move on, we learned from whatever it was that caused us to get stuck in the first place. If we did not learn, we were and still are prone to get stuck again when something of the same sort happens again. And it will. Mistakes, wrongs done to or by us, foolish decisions, somehow never seem to vanish from our lives. They rise up to bite us every now and then. Such is life!

The good part is that as we grow older, these events become less as less. We have learned from the past. We move on and continue to do so, but we move on not so much looking over our shoulders for something bad to happen, but from the perspective of having learned from the past. A wise person once observed that life is lived forward but understood backward.

Isn’t that the truth?! (Double punctuation mark) We both realize that we have learned from the past on the one hand and are surprised to realize how much we did learn. Not only that, when reflecting back on those unfortunate incidents in the past, we often have to admit that, as bad as they might have been, as traumatic and painful they were, we are glad they happened because they led us to where we are today and we are thankful for where we are.

You see, if the bad had not happened, our life would have turned out differently and we have no idea what that life would have become. We may think it would have been better, but that is a moot point. Our life now is the result of everything in our life that has led us to where we are right now. We only understand where we are now when we look back on from where we came.

The blessing is that we have come this far because we have learned from the past, the good and the bad. And we will continue to be blessed in spite of the mistakes and foolish decisions and the bad that happens and which, given human nature we cannot avoid, if we continue to look forward, always learning from those backward glances.

DON’T THANK GOD TODAY

I would like to begin with a word of advice. And that is: Don't thank God. Not today, anyway. Tomorrow. The next day; but don't thank God today. Do something else. That something else is to thank all God's helpers: our mom and dad, the teachers we have or had in school; Peter, Paul and Mary; the neighbor down the street; even our brothers and sisters. They are all God's helpers.

For it is all of these people who make us realize that God is what it is all about. God does everything for us, but so much of what God does for us is done indirectly through others. He feeds us and clothes us as we grow up through mom and dad. He teaches us how to live in His world through the words and examples of Miss Simms in first grade and Mr. Johnson in eighth grade.  He encourages us through the examples of his saints and enlivens us through the music of his singers and the paintings of his artists. God works through others most of the time. Sure, in a pinch, God does it all by himself. But by and large God works through his children -- through you and through me.

For example: Is that old but warm coat you decided to get one more year out of still hanging in the closet from last year when you didn't get that year out of it that you said you would? Today would be a good day to take it to someone who needs it. That's God taking care of his children through his children. Matter of fact, the only way that God can and will see to it that that cold, little old lady has a warm coat to wear is through one of us getting it to her. God does not work like Cinderella's Fairy Godmother and wave a magic wand and poof!! new coat. We have to be that real Godchild who works, not magic, but love.

The Apostle John tells us that God is Love and he or she who lives in love, lives in God and God lives in that person. When we do something loving, it is God living in us who does it. And when someone does something loving for us, it is God living in the other who does it. Sometimes we forget about the God living in us and in others.

We must not. We need to spend some time, you and I, thinking about how much God really does love us: how God gave his son to us to live and die and be raised up -- all for us, all because God loves us. But as great an act of love that Jesus' death on the cross was for us, it would all be in vain if God did not continue to love us in those around us and love us in ourselves.

Jesus's death on the cross forgives all our sins. His resurrection from the dead gives us eternal life, even though we really don't deserve it. Those are great and fantastic gifts. But the greatest gift God gives us every day is his continual love for us that is shown to us in and through other people: mom and dad and teacher and friend and neighbor.

Knowing that I am forgiven and will have eternal life is great. But knowing that I am loved is absolutely necessary. I know God loves me because I see him loving me through you. You and I are called to make God's love known to others by our very lives. Thank God for his love. But don't thank God today. Thank those who love us through him.

VIRTUE

"Virtue is its own punishment", says Denniston, whoever Denniston may be. Obviously he is a pessimist, albeit a realist, and that for two reasons. First of all, those who do good are always suspect. "Nobody is that good," we say. "What's her motive?" we wonder. Somehow we seem to get the impression that people are good either because they are afraid of being bad or because they want to get something in return for their good actions – something even better.

But is that really true for you and for me?  Granted, we are not always all that good. Granted, there is a little sin in each one of us, a little too much perhaps. But we are not good simply because we are afraid of what will happen to us were we to stray from the path of righteousness. Let's give ourselves and our God a little credit. We are basically good people who do good because that is the way God created us. That's the way we are.

And, granted, sometimes we do have ulterior motives for being good, or at least better than we might be. For children it is the Santa Claus Syndrome: "Better watch out...Santa Claus is coming to town" For adults, it is the Selfish Syndrome: "I want something I may not really deserve, all else being equal."

So, in all honesty, we are good sometimes for the wrong reasons. We are virtuous sometimes for other than the right or best reasons. But that is no reason not to be virtuous. Contrary to Denniston, virtue is its own reward: just knowing we are doing what we should be doing makes us feel good. And isn't that sometimes, even always, reward enough for us??

Denniston is a realist, secondly, however, because he realizes that those who do good are called upon to do good again...and again and again. Denniston might call such people "suckers." I suspect God would call them Christians, call them his children.  Yes, if we do good for others, we get a reputation. People begin to expect it of us. Churches and pastors who are generous in helping people who knock on their doors soon find a line of people looking for help. But is helping another person, deserving or not, a form of punishment? Really?

If we took Denniston seriously, the only reason to be virtuous is so that we can get something out of our actions. Virtue would not be its own reward. On the contrary, if we listen to Denniston, we would be virtuous because we were looking for a reward. Obviously, I don't buy that. Virtue is its own reward.

All you and I need do to verify that is look back upon those times when we were good, selfless. Selfishness, on the other hand is its own punishment. All we need do to verify that is remember those times when we have been selfish.

If we are looking for rewards for our actions, there is only one way to go: the way of the virtuous, the way of Jesus which, yes, is sometimes the way of the cross. But that, too, that cross, is the way to the reward in this life and the life to come. The choice is ours.

TO WHOM ARE WE LISTENING?

Jean Kerr tells the story. Her young child came home from school all teary-eyed and sad. When she asked what was the matter, he told her about the play he was in in grade school. The play was about Adam and Eve and he was Adam. Jean had a quizzical look on her face and asked, "Why so sad?  That's wonderful. You have the best part. You are the leading man." "Maybe so," her son replied, "but the snake has all the lines."

That is a funny story. And it's a good reminder to you and me. The problem that I have – and I suspect, the problem you have – is not so much that the snake has all the lines. It is rather that we believe all the lines that the snake feeds us. Remember the snake's first line in the Bible, in Genesis? "If you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will become like God." Now that is a classic line. Who wouldn't like to be like God? Imagine the power to eliminate disease and famine and poverty. The power to make everything right. The power, the power, the power. Even if we use all that power correctly, it's a wonderful thought, a wonderful temptation.

Like Adam and his wife, we, too, bought the snake's line, all of it: hook, line and sinker. We grabbed the bait. And we got hooked. Boy did we get hooked. And we've been swallowing the bait ever since, choking on it. You see, back in the very beginning man and woman did not need to become like God. They already were. That is how God created them. But by doing whatever they did, by buying the snake's line, they became unlike God. Now, ever since then, we have been trying to become like God again.

Becoming like God, however, is not, no matter how it seems, having illusions of grandeur. Nothing of the sort. Becoming like God, becoming perfect as God is perfect, is what being human is all about. Once mankind bought the snake's line, once we became imperfect, we could no longer be and no longer were perfect.

The Old Testament is a record of the beginning of that journey on the road back to perfection, that trek down the path to becoming like God once again. The journey, of course, ends in Jesus, who through his death and resurrection gives us the means to perfection. The only hindrance is that whereas in the beginning perfection was a fact, was a reality in this life, that is no longer so. We now can become perfect only in and through our own death and resurrection.

That may be unfortunate because it then becomes all too easy to not try. I mean, why make the effort when we won't see the results, when we won't see perfection, in this life? Why indeed? If we buy that reasoning, we've swallowed the snake's line once again.

The reality of the situation is to understand that even the attempt is worth the effort; the struggle itself is worthwhile, that carrying a cross is good and necessary. That's another line, of course. It can be grabbed onto or it can be passed up. But whose line are we going to believe, the snake's or Jesus'? Seems to me that the snake has had all the lines long enough. It's time we started listening to the Writer, the Director, the Playwright in the drama of Salvation instead of listening to one of the actors.