To whom do you think the preacher preaches? Well I can tell you this: if it isn't important enough to address to myself, I'll not waste your time either. So we're talking to everyone here this morning and our subject is life - living it with intelligence, vision and compassion.

I often envy our ancestors because when the going got rough they always seemed to find the way, and to know in which direction to go, and exactly what God wanted of them. Notice how, by the end of the Book of Exodus, the reading of which we complete this very Shabbat morning, the plans for the tabernacle were deciphered, it was built and completed and dedicated!

The interior and exterior design of this portable desert tabernacle was finished and the priests were now dressed in the prescribed garments of their exalted station. The Torah informs us that a pillar of clouds suspended itself above this tent of meeting by day, and a pillar of fire by night. And as long as the cloud or the fire stayed put, well then, so did the people. When either of them moved ahead, the Israelites broke camp and journeyed as God was directing.

Now I don't know about your life, but mine is characterized by no such signs of certainty. No pillar of cloud or fire standing vigil above our house on Chestnut Street! At every age and stage, the "where" and "when" of life can be so baffling for us all. The decision whether or not to set out or to stay tight, in all of its perplexities and varieties, often provides us with moments of utmost uncertainty, don't you think?

Like it or not, life is making choices. We are oversupplied with such from our Internet services to our long distance plans and carriers. Do you know that Revlon makes almost 200 shades of lipstick - 41 of them varieties of pink! I read somewhere that ten years ago the average grocery store carried 9,000 items. Today, make it over 25,000! Life, today, is making choices.

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote:

But we're not always happy, are we? Sometimes, desiring only to do the right by ourselves and on behalf of those whom we dearly and most genuinely love and cherish, we nevertheless, blow it. Sometimes, we make the wrong choice - innocently, but stupidly. And sometimes, out of mean spiritedness, mischief, inflated ego, or personal hurt, we proceed to fight fire with fire, and fail to be as loving and kind as we ought.

I believe we are too hard on one another. We are too quick to censure and to judge the other guy. And, you know why, because we're all of us so weak, so vulnerable, so susceptible to hurt, so like children who only want to please, but who sometimes "mess up" despite our earnest efforts to do otherwise.

In a city many hundreds of miles from here, during a wedding reception, I'll never forget a woman who made a beeline toward me. I was just sampling a tasty hors d'oeuvre, rather happy with myself over the ceremony which had just gone so well. So here comes this self-possessed lady who, with absolutely no introduction, no explanation, but with inexplicable intensity and not a little velocity, blurted out: "As long as I live, I'll never forgive you for what you said."

Before I could swallow what was in my mouth, she was gone! Do you know I still have no idea what she thought I had said or done. Frankly I was sure she had the wrong rabbi! But maybe she did have the right one - could I have been misunderstood? Of course!

Could I have said something hurtful? I surely hope not. It wouldn't have been intentional, but I'm not claiming to be perfect either! But for goodness sakes, give a fellow a chance to explain, to understand, and, if need be, to straighten things out and set it right.

Says Longfellow in a brilliant and important observation:

    "If we could know the secret history of our enemy we should find sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility."

Among the most crucial decisions any one of us will ever make is the one which enables us to forgive another; to pronounce a no-fault peace treaty. That's taking life's high road to holiness!

Robert Dewey tell the story of a man and a boy who find themselves sharing a seat and a lonely vigil on "A Train Ride to Smithville."" How old is this boy anyway? the man asks himself. Seventeen, maybe eighteen. A peculiar anxiety is written all over this young face. Is it shame? Or guilt? Or fear?
 

The man tries to forget the boy by opening a magazine but looks up in time to see the boy's head drop dejectedly against the window. The man feels sure the boy is fighting to keep from crying.

Finally the boy asks the man if he knows what time it is and when the train will get into Smithville.

'That's where you're headed?' he asks the boy. 'Yes,' he replies. 'Very small town, isn't it? I didn't realize the train even stopped there.'

'It doesn't usually, but they said they'd stop for me'.

'You live there, do you?'

'Yes. That is, I used to.'

'Going back home, then, eh?'

'Yes. That is, I think so-maybe.'

It's quite a while before the boy speaks again. When he does, it is to tell the story of his young life. Four years ago, he had done something so wrong he'd run away from home. He just couldn't face his Dad, so he had left without seeing anyone.

Since then he had worked here and there, but never for long in one place. He had learned about the pain of life. He'd often been without money, sometimes pretty sick, usually very lonely, and, once in a while, close to real trouble. Finally, he decided to go home to his father's house.

'Your father know you're coming?'

'Yes,' replies the boy.

'Then he'll be there to meet you, I imagine.'

'Maybe. I don't know.'

Silence again, and a long look out the window. Then came the rest of the story.

' I'd sent him a letter. I didn't know if he'd want me back after what I did. I wasn't sure he could ever forgive me. He has never known where I was, and I've never written to him, except for the letter three days ago when I said I'd be coming home.

But I know how much I hurt him. So in this letter I said I'd come home if he wanted me to. There's a tree right by the little station in Smithville;. . .We used to climb that tree all the time, me and my older brother. In the letter I told my Dad to put a sign on the tree if he wanted me to get off the train and come home. I told him I'd look for a white rag on one of the branches . . . where the train passes.

If there's a rag on the tree, I'll get off; if there isn't, I'll just ride on somewhere, I don't know where.

The train pushes on through the night and now both of them wait for Smithville.

'When we get there, will you look for me? I'm sort of scared. All of a sudden I don't know what to expect . . . '

'Sure, I'll be glad to.'

Shortly after, the conductor comes through, announcing, 'Smithville, next stop!' The boy makes no move, says nothing.

The man peers into the darkness and then he sees it. He shouts so loud that everyone in the car can hear him.

'Son, son that tree, that tree is covered with white rags!'

Sooner or later, we all need to be made whole again. There is no one who is really independent! People who forgive are people of depth and substance and character. These are the ones among us whose lives are lived in an uncommon level of certainty, as if directed by a pillar of cloud by day, and illumined even in the darkness, by God's loving light.