Free Will

"At the beginning, we're given free will. There's no path assigned besides the one we make for ourselves, by choice."

Magdalena clearly understood her grandfather's sage words, but wasn't any closer to the answers she needed. Understanding words doesn't mean their truth is also easily understood.

Magdalena, sad and upset, wanted very much to understand. They got the news about her cousin yesterday. He was found in a dumpster. They don't know who or why. Sixteen was so very young to die, she felt a slip of cold ghost pass thru her like a drafty death. She shuddered again, and looked out the kitchen window. Magdalena saw her cat sitting on the old stone wall, knowing everything as cats do. But she couldn't ask her cat why.

Her cousin had dropped out of school, dumped his old friends for his new gang. They said he drank until he passed out, and the police got to know him. They suspected he was involved with the gang's specialty of burglary, breaking into homes during the day when folks were working. But that's what Magdalena couldn't figure out, and why she finally asked her grandpa, the snartest person she knew. Why would God ever send her cousin down such a dark and deadly path?

That's when her grandfather answered that we humans choose our own path- not with everything- but always when our own evil actions are involved. Yes, Magdalena was certainly glad that God wasn't to blame. But that only generated a thousand more questions.