Ok, here’s my 5 minutes worth…
Path.
It is a long, winding dirt path downhill from my great grandmother’s house to the dirt road below. It passes an old spring where the milk was kept to cool when my grandmother/mother was a child. Across the dirt road sits the old barn where the cattle used to live. I followed the path as a child in the summer. It was a cool, quiet path, under trees. But the cows were not quiet, nor were they inviting. It’s amazing to me that I still remember this. I must have been 4. But walking that path, barefoot as a child stood out. It was comforting, homey, reassuring that I had come from somewhere, someone I could see and touch. In a world full of doubt and confusion there was no doubt where that path led. To a little, very old, white-haired lady living in a very old farm house at the top of the hill at the end of the path. I loved her very much and she loved me.
Paths take us many places and teach us many things along the way. I learned that no matter what there were people in my life who would love me- ME. No tags, no conditions, no justification. They just loved me- and that taught me more about the love of Jesus, I think, than any sermon could have.
Ding.