ONCE YOU CROSS THAT LINE....

Life is full of lines. Really. Just think back....!

As a kid, there were all sorts and sizes of lines. Your mother was always warning you "not to cross the line," and she surely drew plenty of them. Pay attention to your teachers...listen to your father...and, most dangerous of all her lines, don't cross me.

Then all those lines your little friends dared you with. Cross this line and see what happens to you...this is mine so stay out...remember who you're dealing with.

But then we become an adult. Now the lines grow, not only in number but in complexity.You never realized how many subtle lines there would be on the road of life. Consider the subtlety between good and bad...legal and illegal...cunning or crookedness...candor and insult....creative and crazy. What's more, you never realized how crossing some of these lines would have such enormous consequences.

For instance, that candor/insult line -- how difficult to navigate. How do you respond when the boss growls, "Now be honest with me...!" or your mate asks, "How do I really look in this....?"

If life is a road and lines cross it at every turn, one can reasonably conclude this was the way it was meant to be. Is it the caring hand of God challenging our better angels...? Or the impersonal hand of evolution programming our survival...? Take your pick, either way the road and the lines remain! Mark Twain liked to say, "Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow." Funny line, Mr.T., but there are those times when some lines insist otherwise.

Oh.....there's one more line. Comes to all of us. That little line on the gravestone between the year of our birth and the year of our death. One particularly thoughtful writer said of that line: "This dash is all the things we've done from birth to death, which makes it is the most important line of our lives. Hopefully, those who remember us, will remember it with both honor and respect."

What better hope can there be....?