Years ago, on a bitter cold night in January, our house caught on fire. Our family of seven slept upstairs in a wooden farmhouse.  As we raced down the stairs, fire was coming up through the steps below. That night, my Dad, Mom and I were able to put out the fire, but not before it had ruined part of our home.

Seeing a tattered American flag displayed on the home next door after a windstorm, my aged father-in-law—a Colonel retired from the United States Air Force—set out to offer his neighbor a replacement for the damaged flag. I accompanied him as we met the neighbor, a short, portly man with white hair and a big smile. He had not realized that his flag was in tatters, and he graciously accepted the new flag as it was offered.

Alfred Lord Tennyson, one of the greatest poets in English history, wrote: “If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk in my garden forever.” These sweet terms of endearment sadly do not reflect mankind’s universal experience. The history of mankind’s attempts to find “true love” seems instead to offer very little that stands the test of time.

“She is a small woman with a globally familiar face, a hundred carat smile … a thousand year history at her back… She is wry and knowing, but she feels a calling… She has been shrewd, kind and wise.”

The well-known cliché, “The early bird gets the worm” is often followed by another time worn truism, “The second mouse gets the cheese.” While we chuckle at these mental word pictures, they do contain a grain of truth that applies to everyone.