On every trip are passengers, friends and foes:
Be true, seek sincere and your heart will draw your like.
True friends are rare, precious, essential: keep them close.
There are fiends with faces of friends, soft on the eyes
Lacking vision and destination, from such  flee!
Keep eyes open for the graceful, heart open to the grateful
Life is not a journey of one, we’re crafted for connection
And one begets another. Every man comes with a chord
Every heart beats for another, everyone plays a role
That makes or mars, that lifts or beats. For good or ill
Is their role is their choice. To receive or reject – our choice,
For every part are others. on every path are helpers
The  wise will discern and make the most of each.

Food for Thought: Every one of us came into the world with umbilical chord. It is not until delivery, when we are confirmed ready to strive on our own that the chord has to be severed. Prior to then, the chord was our life line meaning that survival at that fetal stage would have been impossible without the chord. Same goes after we are born. The chords are more and invisible yet they are there, connecting us to parents, siblings, families, friends, colleagues, associates, from one phase of life to another, from our smaller communities to the larger societies. As we grow, the number of chords change and expand and survival for each phase, in each environment, can be frustrating if not impossible when we attempt to ignore or exist without due recognition, appreciation, and dependence on essential chords. The times we live in hail isolation but the wise will know that we are not islands that can exist by themselves, isolated from all others. We need to be alive to make it in life. We need one another to truly live. We need connections to thrive.

Scripture: And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’ Matthew 25:40.

Prayer: Dear Lord, open my eyes to see the helpers You have lined my travel path with, and help me to identify and be there for those whom You have destined me to help, amen.