This is the third “Everyman” literary work.  The first was a play penned in the late 1400’s.  The play opens with a prologue where God speaks, lamenting that humans have become too absorbed in material wealth and riches to follow Him. The characters have not changed over the centuries—God, a messenger, death, Everyman, kinfolk, friends, goods, good deeds, knowledge, beauty, strength, discretion, wits.  It soon becomes obvious that one’s fun-loving friends will not be traveling with Everyman, nor will relatives, either of whom would certainly vouch for his good virtues. (Evidently, they will have to write their own accounts.) Goods will not make the journey because their presence would only make God’s judgment of Everyman more severe—he should have shared them.  Beauty, strength, and wits all fade away as well.
Enter Everyman version 2.0, five hundred years later but not without a story of mankind to share as well. The new ‘morality’ is vastly different from version 1.0, but nonetheless obviously applicable to Everyman.  It is a story of sad resignation that nothing really matters.  Life is but a series of episodes that may as well be lived with a sense of certain despair.  “Religion was a lie that he had recognized early in life, and he found all religions offensive, considered their superstitious folderol meaningless, childish, couldn’t stand the complete unadultness—the baby talk and the righteousness and the sheep, the avid believers. No hocus-pocus about death and God or obsolete fantasies of heaven for him. There was only our bodies, born to live and die on terms decided by the bodies that had lived and died before us.”  Everyman is drowning in sin, but enjoying the swim.
Everyman 3.0 is an attempt to ascribe an intelligent faith to today’s Everyman, and to encourage thought about eternal matters.  Everyman 3.0 ages, parents pass away, health begins to fail, and the certainty of eternity arrives. Probably not a lot different from our Everyman of the Middle Ages, except this Everyman happens to have a collection of photos accumulated along the way, and it dawns on him that the Creation that surrounds us, coupled with the Scriptures, has a lot to say about faith.  And so began this endeavor to chronicle a pattern of thinking that applies the wisdom of the Word to the Creation that surrounds us. The result will always lead to a stronger faith. Faith is a choice that Everyman must make.
The purpose of this “portfolio” is to show that life is full of clues that point us toward days filled with hope and purpose. It isn’t too big of a step to observe God’s creation and thereby understand the very nature of God. The clues to explain it all are found in God’s Holy Scriptures. It is as if we can “practically see and hear and feel God’s Spirit reflected by everything in nature.”
The creation, coupled with God’s living Word, becomes an eloquent spokesman. We learn that Everyman can choose a hopeless death experience, or we realize that Everyman can choose to live by faith and see the hand of God in their life.  These pages will immerse you in a portfolio of life, paired with scriptures and brief sketches, each of which gives purpose to life for Everyman.
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