Sunday, May 17, 2026
“Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word” (Psalm 119:9 KJV).
If our physical posterity could augment its spiritual dexterity, exactly what would that entail?
Let me start by furnishing you with a little about my background. Having parents of primarily French-Canadian and Irish ancestry, I was born and raised in a Bible-believing household in southwestern Louisiana (“Cajun Country”). Enrolled in public elementary and high schools from the early ’90s to the mid-2000s, and pursuing higher education (public university training in science) for another nine years (bachelor’s and master’s degrees), and finally completing a three-year pastoral program in seven months (excluding instruction under innumerable other men in ministry), I have been exposed to a wide range of viewpoints both bad and good. I am still learning, and there is still much more I can and need to learn, but I have reached a place where I can offer some advice that I have gathered over the last 20 years.
That being said, dear reader, the first and foremost issue to settle is preparing for eternity, for it might come (awfully) sooner than you think. In the two decades since our high school graduation, we have lost at least three classmates. One (age 20) took his own life in a domestic dispute just a few years after high school, another (age 28) died in a truck accident a couple of months before our 10th-year reunion, and a car crash took the life of a third one (age 38) last year. Just the other day, one of my niece’s childhood friends, only 18, perished in an automobile collision; cancer claimed the life of the girl’s older sister, at age 15, many years before. At my nephew’s graduation yesterday, a vacant chair represented a young man who also never reached his 16th birthday. These are six examples of lives tragically cut short! You might think you will die as a senior citizen, but this is not necessarily true. Earthly life can end before you know it.
Despite all our planning, contingencies will arise that offer us alternate paths. It is not always clear where to go or what to do, but having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ is the primary matter to settle….
333 Words of Grace 