Guidelines For Living

In a tribal area in Northern Luzon in the Philippines, a witch doctor sprinkles chicken blood on the door posts of a new house and chants a prayer asking that the spirits bless the residents. In Yangon merchants step out of their sandals and walk barefooted up the steps to the great Shedagon Pagoda and sit in contemplation before a golden Buddha. Half-way around the world, families fill parking lots, then with Bibles under their arms stream into churches looking more like modern shopping centers than traditional ones with spires and organs. While their paths to God may be as divergent as the distance between the three groups I mentioned, all of them, right or wrong, are reaching out to God as they conceive him to be.