In the book “Point of No Return” (by John P. Marquand) there is a man named Charley Gray. Charley comes to a moment in his career when he is competing to be the v.p. of the private bank for which he works. While he is waiting on the choice to be made to takes a trip home to the small town of his childhood for a time of wondering about his life. If he becomes the v.p. he will have “made it”. Reason tells him so. But within himself he is not sure that the status and salary that goes with this next step are going to bring him happiness and meaning into his life. Scripture tells us a story of when Jesus is tempted in the desert by the devil. (Matthew 4:1-4) Jesus is in the desert and the Devil says, “dude, if you are that hungry just turn the stones into bread and all will be well”. Jesus tells the Devil “Human beings don’t live by bread alone”. It reminds me of Charley Gray and his “Point of No Return”. Maybe each of us has come upon our own “Point of no return” in which we know that the choice we are about to make will shape our lives. For good or for ill. Frederick Buechner says “There is nothing moralistic or sentimental about this truth. It means for us simply that we must be careful with our lives, for Christ’s sake, because it would seem that they are the only lives we are going to have in this puzzling and perilous world, and so they are very precious and what we do with them matters enormously….there is always the temptation to believe we have all the time in the world, whereas the truth of it is that we do not. We have only a life, and the choice of how we are going to live it …” (from his sermon “The Calling of Voices”)
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