The Path of Least Resistance

On August 1st, our church embarked on a 21 day fast. Now I've done this before, but how many know that just because you've done something doesn't make it easier to do again? I love to be challenged by difficult things, but when it really starts to press I want to give up. There are things in your life that other people can look at and say, "Gosh that looks hard and you do it so well." Nice compliment, but those things are usually the things that "come naturally" to me and don't take a whole lot of effort. What about the things that don't come easy and I have to push myself to do well?

You know in parenting my six kids, there inevitably comes that time when you have enjoyed them and disciplined them and lived life with them and then you really wish you could give them to somebody else for a few years until they get their heads back on straight. Parents of teenagers know what I'm talking about. Until I had teenagers I thought poopy diapers and sticky fingers were a challenge. Now I know the truth. However, I know that looking back at my own teenage years, they were the ones in which I really discovered what my parents were made of. Our relationship was truly forged in that time of our lives. It had its foundation laid in the early fun and easy years, but forging requires some heat and some sweat and tears.

Psalm 66:8-12

 

Bless our God, O peoples!
    Give him a thunderous welcome!
Didn’t he set us on the road to life?
    Didn’t he keep us out of the ditch?
He trained us first,
    passed us like silver through refining fires,
Brought us into hardscrabble country,
    pushed us to our very limit,
Road-tested us inside and out,
    took us to hell and back;
Finally he brought us
    to this well-watered place.

If we have chosen to follow after Christ then we have already chosen the harder way, but there are times along the road that we will be tempted to go back, take a detour or a short cut that looks easier. In conclusion, let me leave you with this well known poem.

The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;	5
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,	10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.	15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.	20