Greetings!: Choices

Saturday, December 4, 2021

Choices

Have you ever wondered how your life might have been if you made other choices that were once available to you?

A physical challenge has recently made me take 25 trips to a medical clinic in Hershey. We've also made two side trips to Elizabethtown. These trips have made me ask myself this question.

When I was graduating from Susquehanna University in 1963 I had three interviews for teaching jobs – Hershey, Elizabethtown and Penn Manor – and all three offered me a job. Did I make the right choice?

On each trip to Hershey we passed the old high school where I would have taught as well as their new more modern high school building. Hershey appears to be a nice, clean town and their educational program is highly rated. I doubt that I would have gone wrong if I had accepted their offer. But I just didn't feel very interested or comfortable after the interview. However, I do wonder what would have happened to my career and family had I said yes.

Now Elizabethtown was a different situation. Both my wife and I had lived there, actually about five blocks apart for about two years, even though we didn't know each other at that time. We both have many good memories and a few weeks ago we even visited the areas where we had lived. Our old elementary school has been torn down. Her home looked a little different. My home that was on the campus of Elizabethtown College has also been torn down and replaced by a college building. But the big campus yard that I played in is unchanged.

Now I really wanted to go back to Elizabethtown but the teaching job that they offered me was not the least bit interesting. They wanted me to teach all low level math courses. I reluctantly said no.

Then there was Penn Manor, a school that I didn't know much about. And they didn't even have football. But they gave me a good schedule and I said yes. And for 39 years I enjoyed myself. I had many great opportunities there and I knew I was where the Lord had placed me.

Years later I was also offered similar jobs as department chairman at Ephrata High and then at Manheim Township. Both thought they could offer me more than I had at Penn Manor, but they couldn't. And I had no reason to change. I was where the Lord wanted me to be.

But in my second year of teaching I was contacted by the former sports publicist at Susquehanna. I worked for him at Susquehanna and he and his wife became friends of Dianne and me. He had just taken the job of public relations director at Wagner College in Staten Island. He needed a sports publicist to work with him there and he offered the job to me. It was tempting but Wagner was not a location where I wanted to raise my family. But who knows where we would be today if I had accepted.

Now as I look back at the past 60 years I am thankful for all the opportunities I have had not only in education but in ministry as well. I never could have dreamed of all of them back when I was making major decisions. But the Lord knew and He provided and helped me make the right choices.

There is a hymn that shares my testimony. Maybe it could be sung at my funeral as praise and thanks to the Lord.

Some day life's journey will be o'er

And I shall reach that distant shore,

I'll sing while ent'ring Heaven's door

"Jesus led me all the way."

Jesus led me all the way,

Led me step by step each day;

I will tell the saints and angels

As I lay my burden down

"Jesus led me all the way.

If God should let me there review

The winding paths of earth I knew,