The easiest route is not always the best path to take

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.