Crossroads

    Have you ever been down that road? Its a road that you know where it will take you and so you travel down it with the knowledge and security that you will reach the end and your final destination. But what about those unfamiliar journeys? Where the road does not seem so familiar and you pass street after street and don't know if and where you should make your next turn. You have arrived at the crossroads.
    The young man stood very still in the twilight hours of that November morning. The air was heavy with dew and there was a distinct fall snap that chilled Chuck to the bone. He had three things with him  as he stood in the dark shadows of the trees which were growing along the shoulder of the dirt road. In his hand was his guitar case that he held as if it was a trust-worthy weapon, in his heart was his faith which his mother had instilled in him at a very young age and covering him were just the clothes on his back, old and worn,  a steady reminder of why he was running away in the first place. Chuck was the eldest son of a Louisiana share cropper who was setting out on his own in search of fame and fortune.What he would find was his fate.
    "What do you have there?" a voice shatters the stillness of the morning and sends Chuck's heart rate into an irregular beat as a huge push of adrenalin courses through his blood vessels. Chuck startled, backs up a couple steps in the opposite  direction of the voice. "Is that some kind of an instrument?" the stranger's voice while still hidden in the shadows begins to sound slightly less threatening to Chuck but instinctively  he takes another couple of steps backwards. "Who are you" Chuck musters up a bit of courage and begins a conversation with the darkness. 
     "Who am I? Who are you is the question of the hour or better yet who would you like to be?" Now the voice was beginning to sound very familiar almost like Chuck's father only with a touch of charm and class not associated with a southern  cotton farmer. Now as the first light of the morning began to beam over the distant hills Chuck could begin to see the silhouette of a  tall man. He was very well dressed in a black suit, white silk shirt complete with a tie and felt hat. There were no wrinkles in his face but he had the aire of a man who was well educated well beyond his years.
     "Well...." sheepishly Chuck begins "I would like to play this here guitar in New Orleans!"  The tall stranger stepped out of the shadows and into the light "I'll make a deal with you my young friend" the tall man says as a  hearty smile reveals two rows of perfectly straight white teeth. "What kind of a deal" Chuck reluctantly offers in a bid to discover who this stranger was and what he really wanted. "I know allot of people son and I can make your dreams come true not only in New Orleans but in Nashville too!" Chuck set his guitar case down and offered the man his hand. The man's grip was strong, warm and he felt as if this man was telling him the truth. "Why it wont cost you any money" the tall man chuckled "But it might just cost you your soul...So do we have a deal?" Chuck's  load now lightened he began to feel like he was as  free as a bird with no burdens and reached out once again to shake the tall man's hand only to watch it dissolve into thin air. In fact the tall man  had completely vanished as quickly as he had come.
     This story while being part of  our American folk lore has some interesting parallels to our lives today. If we say that the tall man was the devil himself then we know him to be the father of lies. Coming as an angel of light Satan wants to deceive us and see him as a good man and not the hideous creature that we have heard conjured up in our children's stories. Its this red humanoid, grotesque face holding his devilish Triton that helps to convince people everywhere he is nothing more than a mythical creature. This view is definitely unfortunate but probably part of his plan anyway. In his beginnings Satan was  in fact the most beautiful creature God created. Key word here is created, Satan is a created being. What fills Satan and caused him to fall in the first place is pride and that is why God hates pride so much as a sin. Satan offered to give the young man his dreams and the young man gladly shook on the deal.
     While our dreams are important sometimes they are not really what we need in the end. The fame and fortune of a popular musician may lead to an empty life of loneliness, pain and suffering. Many musicians have died due to drug and alcohol abuse an affliction which is usually brought on by loneliness. Being in the lime light and those velvet curtain calls are not what you might think they are. Being on the road day after day eating fast foods and staying in endless hotel rooms is not my idea of fun. Gobs of money in the hands of a lonely man can only bring  bitterness and destruction. Most, but not all, of Hollywood's Stars have had turbulent lives that usually end in their premature deaths or loss of their initial fame and fortune. God says "What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but ends up losing his soul?"
     A couple of weeks ago I was up in Tustin, Ca. where I met Kenny who played "Pugsley", a childhood star on the 1960's hit sitcom "The Adams Family". The show still runs world wide and has developed into a "Cult" classic. Kenny was cheated out of his residual program stock years ago. And at the age of 50 he was however not happy, successful or gleaning anything from his stint as a child actor on the glamorous studio sound stages of  Hollywood. In fact at the age of 12 he was told by his agent that his career was over and that he had been "Type Casted" and nobody wanted to hire him. Ouch, what a blow for anyone especially a child to take, a blow that must have sent Kenny reeling. At the spry age of 14 depression began to set in and led him away from school and into a life full of drugs and alcohol abuse. He has worked on and off as a "Grip" performing behind the scenes lighting and camera set up and rail  moving. Today, Kenny has a long black beard, kind eyes and a testimonial of where stardom has deposited him...homeless on the streets of Pasadena.
     So if you are ever somewhere you didn't expect to end up and a tall man, nicely dressed appears out of nowhere and offers you your dreams, you had better take a deep breath and ask God which way He wants you to turn.