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       The newspapers a few years ago carried a tragic story of a young high school student in Texas who decided to play a game of Russian Roulette.  He took a 38 caliber revolver out of the glove compartment of a friend’s car, emptied all of the bullets out of the chamber, put only one back in, and gave it a spin.  Then he put the gun up to his temple, pulled the trigger, and it fired.  He died in a hospital about two hours later.  And I am sure your reaction to that is  essentially the same as mine.  For the family and friends, there is, of course, deep sympathy.  But concerning the deed itself, I’m, sure we all agree, not how bad, but rather, how foolish.  What a tragic and needless waste of a young life.

       The mistakes that you and I make may not be so dramatic and final and fatal, but the principle remains the same.  Time and again, we are faced with issues where we must choose between the sensible and the foolish.

       As an example, let us suppose that there is someone we know or maybe someone who is reading this article who is trying to decide what to do with the gift of sexuality.  Basically, two options are available.  One is a series of brief and promiscuous sexual liaisons.  The other is a real home where two people love each other so much that they do not want to love anyone else in the same way.  That love deepens into friendship, produces children, expresses itself in trust and loyalty and fidelity and in the twilight of life, grows more beautiful with every passing year.  Faced with those two choices, for a person to play around with promiscuity is not only wrong, but also incredibly stupid.

       So many of the big issues of life confront us with a choice between the sensible and the incredibly foolish.  Therefore, Jesus always encourages you and me to cultivate and to exercise wisdom and reason, not only to be good but also to make wise decisions.

      So much of life is unpredictable.  We don’t know what tomorrow holds, no one does but God. And it’s good common sense to make reasonable allowance for the unexpected.  That’s the reason why you see fire escapes on public buildings.  No one plans for a fire, but we allow for the possibility that one might happen.

       Jesus reminds us always about the same kind of things in life.  It takes more than money to meet the emergencies of life.  There are some crisis that all of the wealth in the world would not see us through.  We need spiritual reserves; we need strong, personal moral and ethical values; we need the common sense that is born out of genuine faith.

        These are the things in life that cannot be transferred from one person to another, however much we might desire to do so.  We can learn from each other.  We can be inspired by the example of another person.  But the really important things are non-transferrable.  We must bring them with us.  You can inherit your parent’s fortune, but you cannot inherit the honesty and determination that enabled him or her to build it.  Those are traits of character that belong only to those who pay the price for themselves.  When a crisis comes you haven’t got time to go and get them, and there is no way to borrow them from others.  You have had to make them your own and carry them with you every day.

       So what about you?  What are you doing to gain those traits of character that leads to wisdom and right?  What are you doing to put into practice all that Jesus has taught us that leads to reason and wisdom.  What is your choice?