I do not possess a roadmap illustrating the twists and turns
and forks in the road that exist in my life, but sometimes I wish I could see
all that lays ahead of me. Instead, I have stood at forks in the road trying to
choose which path to take. Even though I tried to choose correctly,
occasionally that path leads to grief and pain and insurmountable
difficulties. In my mind, I have
wondered if I could have seen where this road would lead, would I have picked
this path? This wasn’t the shortest route or the quickest route, and definitely
not the easiest route.
Along that chosen journey, I eventually discovered that the
easiest, shortest, quickest route was not the path I needed to take. It is thru the challenges of life that I have
discovered who I am and that the road I prayerfully picked was where I found
God– going before me, standing beside me, and guiding me from behind. Obviously, if I knew the challenges I would
confront on that road, the natural man in me would declare – I will take the
easier road. But God said – the easier
road will not get you to where I want
you to go. If the way was easy, I would
not have needed God and sure I may get there faster, but I’d would not have
overcome challenges or come closer to God.
There is a tendency in life to blame God, to curse God, and
to declare that it is God’s fault that I am on a difficult path, the path that originally
I felt was right. At times I want to declare that it is not fair that this
chosen path is full of ruts and steep climbs. I have a choice –do I stay with
God or do I pull over and let Him off and figure I could do better on my own
and that I alone will find the easier road.
Luckily, it’s not my first steep climb I have been on. So I
look back to the other forks in my life’s journey and I see that God was there
then, so I look for Him now. I look back
and I see that previous challenges have shaped a better person. I am on a
journey to become who God wants me to be.
It is not an easy or simple path.
It’s not the path I would necessarily have picked if I had prior
knowledge to what I would face, but it’s the path that in hindsight has refined
me. I am better off today having taken
the difficult journey. I have learned to
trust God, no matter what happens. I
will go where God will have me go. I
will do what God will have me do. I turn
my life over to Him. He has been there
before. He is with me now. I am not
alone. I am not afraid of the forks in the road, of the steep climbs, of the
journey that lays ahead just beyond the visible bend in the road. I am on the
journey back to God and that is the only road I want to take.
