Each year people from all over the world travel to Kenya to experience the adrenaline rush that only a gehighwayimage1nuine Serengeti safari can offer.  Perhaps; for I never visited Kenya. But I certainly remember my first trip to Lagos, Nigeria (West Africa) in the late eighties.  I promise you that the taxi ride from the airport to the hotel proved to be a kind of cosmopolitan safari which included more thrills than a herd of stampeding elephants!

After seeing my life pass before my eyes the second time, I discovered the problem.  There were no lines painted on any of the roads, including the freeway!  It was a chaotic free for all at speeds reserved for the autobahn.  In the absence of lines, drivers maneuvered in whatever way they believed would give them the edge to reaching their destination.  You would have thought there were daily cash prizes awarded to the motorists scoring the most near misses and escapes from death.

Traversing life without lines is also very perilous.  We are each born with a God-given purpose, an assignment, which we must discover and pursue (the earlier the better) in order to live a life of significance.   The road for the journey changes along the way.  Sometimes it’s a twelve lane highway, downhill with nobody near you for miles.  At other times it becomes a narrow two-way street with sharp turns and steep cliffs just off the shoulder.

But the one thing that should never change regardless of the road ahead, are the lines.   The lines on our life’s journey are our values.  These are the truths, the principles (non-negotiables), by which we live; rich or broke, mountain top or valley, in public or in private.  The lines are our core!  We cross them at our own risk.  Violating them costs us. Penalties are certain.  The lines define our character and shape our world-view.  They keep us safe and make our life attractive.  They do not change because the road becomes narrow, nor are they compromised for sake of opportunity or circumstance.  They keep our destiny in focus, our choices clear and our decisions precise.

And although it’s very easy to judge someone by where they seem to be at any given point on their journey, their true measure is determined by their faithfulness to the lines.  For as our journey progresses and our life unfolds, our significance and our joy will come not from how many deals we made or how many promotions we received.  It will be about our commitment to something greater than our ourselves; our generosity and our graciousness toward others.  It will be about our stewardship to the lines along life’s highway.

Have you defined your lines?

Ralph D. Gerard

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