A fabulous day in the country

I'm working on a non-political post, one about the revolver that Elmer Keith said he used the backstrap of to cut his baby teeth.

But I've been known to take tangents. I get lost a lot. Life is full of right and left turns. The turns almost always vary in angle, but they are left or right turns nonetheless. Of course, one can not turn at all or choose to travel straight up or down. There may be exceptions to the rule, but they escape me now. I need more coffee.

There are the right or left turns Jesus described in Matthew 25: 31-46. That passage is a good compass. It can get us home when the GPS has lost power.

Jesus told us we cannot serve two masters. It is sort of like looking in the rear view mirror while applying makeup and lacking proper focus to reach a destination safely. No, I've never applied makeup while driving or otherwise. No amount of makeup will help this face. But I've worked some wrecks where that was the contributing factor. One makes steering errors when they're distracted by the concerns of this world.

It is a fabulous day, full of hope and promise. It is a day of new beginnings. This isn't "the worst I've ever seen it!", to quote a man I met at an Amtrak station this summer. To believe so allows us to be steered into wrong turns by our fears, lust, greed and other passions. Our perceptions of how flawed the world is can steer us the way of the goats.

May we all look at the people on our left or right or with varied worldviews from ours and see them with eyes of love. The beloved disciple John wrote, "God is love." We were all shaped in the image of our Creator, who did not build us exactly the same. Yet we are one in the body of Christ.