Each Friday morning we four siblings get together to walk and visit.  Today Ellen repeated a story about our father that, surprisingly, neither Tim nor Mac had ever heard.

When Dad was about 10 years old, on the ranch in Wyoming, he liked to ride his horse out into the sagebrush and practice roping.  He roped the sagebrush.  One day on such an excursion he surprised a bear.  Without thinking, he let his loop fly.  He had no sooner done so than he fervently wished he hadn't.  Gratefully he saw the loop of the rope land on the bear's rump instead of around its neck.  "If I'd have lassoed that bear," he told Ellen and I, "it would have come right up the rope, and I wouldn't be here."

How many times in our lives do we figuratively try to rope a bear?  How often do we do something stupid, without thinking, and then regret it?

The 25-year-old son of our neighbor took his own life two weeks ago, the day after Christmas.  At age 15 he took his first drink of alcohol.  In high school he did drugs.  He got a job as a cowboy far away from home, and from his buddies, where he could dry out and not have temptations near at hand.  His employers loved him.

But the demons he had roped with that first drink were not releasable.  They were with him every day, and finally overcame him.  He figuratively roped the bear, and it came up the rope and got him.

Alcohol will do that.  Drugs will do that.  Pornography will do that.  So will tobacco.  Blessed and wise is the young boy who early in life resolves never to touch any of those things.  Blessed and fortunate are his family and posterity.