It Ought To Be Simple

  Gustave Dore "The Angel Appears to Balaam".  My big takeaway for from the Messiah conference, (the one that gives direction and I'll keep coming back to), is wrapped up in two verses about our path in life.  Specifically, the narrow path.  These two verses became the focus of my readings, and of my thoughts:    The first one tells us that this path that's God's best is narrow and limiting, requires us to shut things out, give things up.   But clearly we are to choose this path, it leads to the best life now, and in eternity.  We may not actually  want  to be on that path.   Clearly it's counter-cultural to follow God and His calling.   Few will understand you or lift you up.  Few may support you.  So treasure the friends who do.  Circumstances may turn against you.  So train your thoughts with the promises God has made you.   We may not want  to be on the narrow path sometimes...

Temple Emmanuel, the synagogue I grew up in, had a picnic every year at the nearby Clementon Lake Park. The Park opened in 1928, just in time for the great depression to fossilize it as a relic Hoover era entertainment culture. It always seemed to need a coat of paint. It's been in the news lately for being saved from the bulldozer by an eccentric investor. But I remember if for one thing: not its wooden framed roller coaster, or the lake in the center with paddle wheel cars, nor its hot dogs and cotton candy, but for every boy's first memory of the freedom of the road. The bumper cars. Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild" is probably about a measuring up to a white "YOU MUST BE THIS TALL" line on the wall at the bumper car pavilion somewhere, everywhere, at amusement locations throughout these fruited plains. I grew 10 inches in my sophomore year of high school. As a result, year after year, I did not "measure up" to the required h...