THE BLOG

Around 2:30 PM on Monday, April 8, I walked out of my office totally oblivious to what was happening in the sky above me. As I made my way to my car, from the top of the fire escape stairwell attached to our office building I heard several voices call out to me, “Jerry…the eclipse, the eclipse.” When I looked up, there stood several of our Administrative Assistants wearing the special eclipse viewing sunglasses and staring into the sky. It was then that I remembered that there was supposed to be an eclipse that day. As I have done follow-up reading and reflecting about total eclipses, I have found two things to be especially remarkable:

Building a life is a lot like building a high-rise office building. Every life is built on some kind of foundation. Realizing that, I want to ask a question. Is your life being built on something stable and strong which will hold up under the storms and pressures of life, or on something that is unstable and will collapse when life gets overwhelming? When the storms of life come, no matter how pretty it looks on the outside, will your life stand firm though shaken by the winds and driving rains of life or will it fall?

I have backpacked, but by no means am I a backpacker. Therefore, recently when I was wondering what would be needed to successfully backpack the 2190+ mile Appalachian Trail winding its way through the scenic Appalachian Mountain range from Georgia to Maine, I asked a friend who is a seasoned backpacker. Wanting to narrow down the scope of my question, I asked him, “What are the top six essentials you would need to backpack the Appalachian Trail successfully?” Some of his responses did not surprise me…high protein food, shelter, water, and a map of the Appalachian Trail. What surprised me were his first and second items…