Wisdom Wednesday – Paths

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
    and lean not on your own understanding;
 
in all your ways submit to him,
    and he will make your paths straight.

— Proverbs 3: 5-6

So what is the big deal about traveling a straight path?

It depends on what you want, I suppose. Depending on where you are in life, look back on where you have been. Are you one of those people who seemed to know where they were going and walked straight towards their goal? Or are you one of those people, like me, who meandered a bit along life’s trail?

While exploring on our own can be fun, there are dangers along the trail. Like the little lost lamb, we might find ourselves stuck in a briar patch or the bottom of a ravine with a broken leg. Dangers and dead ends waste time and might keep us from getting where we are going.

And where are we going again? We are going to be with our Father in heaven. That is our goal. That is our hope.

If we don’t have that hope, then what is the point? As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15: 19, “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” He was writing about the validity of the Gospel, but the point is the same. The hope of being with the Father in heaven is our goal. Hope in Christ is our means to that goal.

Traveling the straight path is our affirmation of our hope in Christ. It is how we say, “Yes!” with our feet. It is how we show God and the world that we believe. When we willingly wander from the path, we tell God and the world that the path is not all that important.

Can we follow this path on our own? Sadly, no. We need God’s help. We need to trust him. We need to submit and obey. And yes, God promises us his help.

Application: Examine the path you are on. Is it straight? Could it be straighter?

Food for Thought: How can we trust in the Lord more?