ACROSS THE WAY

How often I have pondered about if I am on the right path? And the thing is before coming to the Lord I seldom even worried about it.

However as a Christian my desire (at least I hope it is the real motivation of my heart) is to follow the path God wants for my life. Which the “scriptural” answer is probably that you need to know the Lord’s will to be sure you are doing what he wants.

Knowing the Lord’s will in all situations is not easy. There are times when prayer and waiting on the Lord don’t keep one from having to make the best decision possible when no clear choice becomes evident.

And in the midst of that process there are the sounds of the footprints from our past, which echo in our minds. In particular those we took before we were following the Lord. Those seem to have the loudest sound in our minds. At least in my mind they do.

What brought this to my mind was having a discussion with someone who was trying to cope with all the mistakes he had made in life. For him the joy came from knowing he had managed to learn from the process and that his future would be more serene and free of the ghosts of his past failures. He felt a certain peace in his quiet victory over a self-abusive lifestyle. And as he approached retirement he spoke of the comfort of knowing he could enjoy his current life with all the fruits of his labors. He had plans and expectations of a golden retirement that would last many years since he was only in his fifties.

The only thing missing from his plans was the Lord. God didn’t fit into his equation. There was no hint of his concern about eternity. Just a certain joy of knowing the rest of his life would be richer than the past.

I sat and listened. And thought to myself how my past failures were still part of my life. I had with God’s help overcome some of them. But my future was in reality plagued enough by those choices that I had no expectations of coming to some golden year retirement. For me life was only full of the promise of a life not much different in quality than the past.

My tormenters might have died that caused me grief, but for me that didn’t hold any promise in this life that I would someone experience a mountain of blessing to offset the horror of those nightmarish valleys. And naturally there was a part of me that felt cheated by this reality.

In time though God led me to “across the way.” It is that precipice of reminder that this life is only a heartbeat. That for the redeemed there is more to being than just this moment. And that included the awareness that God wouldn’t necessarily touch me with some kind of blessing to ease my pain. What he would do is make my life full by his standards. It would be the focus of joy that would not end in some lament of vanity like Solomon voiced when he was at the end of his life.

There are some choices we make in life that carry consequences, which God will not take away from our lives. If we come “across the way” and let him allow us to see the greater view from his spirit, then he will grant us the strength and understanding that will last in to eternity. That is a time of rejoicing even if it means do so without bragging rights.