Jack’s Winning Words 6/9/08
“We know where we are, but know not what we might be.” (Shakespeare) I thought about these words as my granddaughter graduated from high school yesterday. So much of our future is dependent on the opportunities that come before us and the choices we make. As I look back (way back), I see how it worked in my life. I think of Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Not Taken. Opportunities and choices make all the difference. ;-) Jack

HERE IS THE FROST POEM: Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I couldTo where it bent in the undergrowth.Then took the other, as just as fair,And having perhaps the better claim,Because it was grassy and wanted wear;Though as for that the passing thereHad worn them really about the same.And both that morning equally layIn leaves no step had trodden black.Oh, I kept the first for another day!Yet knowing how way leads on to way,I doubted if I should ever come back.I shall be telling this with a sighSomewhere ages and ages hence:Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.

FROM S.S. IN MI: Life holds so many possibilities. You mention your granddaughter and Shakespeare and it made me think of my daughter Emilie. I just dropped her off yesterday at Jackson Community College where she will be working with the Michigan Shakespeare Festival this summer. She is really looking forward to it.
Emilie and I spent the last two and a half weeks in Norway visiting her grandfather. She presented him a recording of a song that was written for my brother after he was killed in a car accident thirty years ago. It was a song written by a friend of my brother, David Hollen, who graduated from seminary at Hillcrest Academy at the same time that my brother graduated high school there. Emilie and her friend Justin heard the tape that I had of the song and they wanted to record it for my father and I. When she played it for my Dad in Norway, it brought tears to his eyes and memories to the surface. They were not tears of sorrow, but tears of joy and appreciation for the time that we had with my brother and the hope of seeing him with the Lord when our time comes.

FROM YOOPER N.K.: THIS IS SO TRUE.........THESE DAYS KAL AND I DO A LOT OF THIS....THE MIRACLE OF KAL GOING TO THE SEMINARY....THE WAY WE MET....WE WOULD HAVE LOVED TO HAVE BEEN ABLE TO GO TO BETHANY FOR THE AHA. GRACE AND PEACE

FROM EMTSINGS: Congratulations! This topic is on my mind a lot these days as my own grandchildren have the audicitiy to get older each year! The oldest Mariah, age 14, lives locally as you know so I have many opportunities (and I take them!) to tell her that truly every chocie she makes really does impact the rest of her life. I think it is exciting to see how they are all developing in different ways and interests. I look at all kids and think "possibilities". Of anything, really!

FROM GOOD DEBT JON: John Croyle, proprietor of the Big Oak Ranch in Alabama says, “Our children our messengers we send into a time we will not see.”

FROM MOLINER, C.F.: Each branch of the fork in the road leads into the unknown. Oh, that I could see around the corners.

FROM J.L. IN MI: I know where I am but I don't know where I am going or what I might become. Hopefully, I am a good example and have left footsteps. Not necessarily footsteps to be followed, but to be walked beside and forward. It's the smallest of choices and the smallest of opportunities which can change or add to our lives and other lives. Today, I will try to make a special choice...

FROM SDG IN TAMPA: Have you read the issue of US News and World Report which lists the Best Careers today? It lists clergy as third and curriculum specialist, which is what Les did after the classroom, as fourth,. Audiologist is first, which I never heard of or thought of fifty years ago It is exciting to think of all the many possibilities open to our grandchildren. What a wonderful life.