"The brave may not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all." – Richard Branson

Good morning everyone and welcome to our observance of Friday, here on this March 10, 2017. I sure enjoy rolling down the highway in the early wee hours of the morning with my window down. The other day I was doing just that when a huge owl flew just in front of the hood of my truck. Now that got my attention. A few more feet and the owl and I would have been involved in a very close form of communication. Window wide open. Forty miles per hour. Yep. That would have made for an even more interesting start to my day. I thought about rolling up my window but I didn't. That breeze felt so good I decided to just keep on trucking down the road. I've told you before how that life itself, to me, is a series of near misses. I also thought about how that we never thought much about the risks involved in almost anything we did as kids growing up. Things like hanging out of the window in a fast moving vehicle. Or, sitting in the back of a pickup truck on the sides ducking limbs, at night. There's much more, but, to share too much would violate the secrecy code of youth. Nowadays, life comes with one of those warning labels like you see on a mattress. Do not remove under penalty of law. I look at our boys. They had opportunities to throw caution to the wind. But, by the time their children got here, our grandchildren, we suddenly, collectively, began to think about all the bad things that could happen as facilitated by all the advertising, the safety devices, new laws, the instantaneous reports of all things terrible, and, in general, we became so cautious our little ones missed out on a lot. I'm not sure where it will all end up but the overly cautious spirit continues today. To a large extent, it is a conditioned response. I can testify that it gets progressively worse with age. I will tell you this. Once I got some breath back into my body, I was very happy that Mr. Owl and I didn't have a close encounter of the worst kind.

You may have noticed a typo in yesterday's blog. When speaking about the hit song written by Randy Newman, I wrote it this way, "You've God a Friend in Me." That should have read, "You've Got a Friend in Me." I am so glad my wife lets me know when I make a boo boo like that. I corrected the blog of record out on the web, but, I don't like to clutter up people's email inboxes with corrected blogs. You are right. If I did, the forty plus folks who receive it every day would be inundated with corrections. At any rate, I'm not happy I made that mistake but I am glad she let me know. I would consult my grammar checking program but he's not talking to me these days. He thinks I don't appreciate his work on my behalf because I only rarely take his recommendations. And, as I have often said, he can't check for stupid. I do write the name God often, therefore, I assume it was some type of automatic response. When you think about it, there's no greater meaning of the word friend than to have God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit as a part of who you are. That was my feeble attempt to salvage something out of my mistake.

We come to the end of another work week. I was going to say busy work week, but, that would not be fair to the fellow who pays me to show up here each day. I think it is safe to say that I have been occupied this week. At times, gainfully so. At other times, not so much. While my wife calls me the world's greatest procrastinator and she may be right, that doesn't mean I don't keep a detailed calendar of things I postpone until the last minute. I suppose that makes me a well-organized procrastinator. I heard one preacher talking about how upset people get when they are delayed. He said he was on an airplane that was supposed to land in 15 minutes. Forty-five minutes later, the pilot came on the intercom and told them a sudden thunderstorm hit the airport area and it would have been unsafe for them to try to land. The preacher said Amen! to that. He went on to share how he would rather be late than be known as 'the late'. I heard another motivational speaker saying that buying a gym membership will not make your muscles stronger. I get it. Writing down the stuff in my calendar book is just that, writing it down. I'll let you come up with a way to finish that thought because suddenly I'm very tired. Enjoy your Saturday and Lord's Day Sunday, and next thing you know, I'll have another episode sitting on your electronic doorstep. May God bless us all is my prayer. Amen. ....More later.