THE HABIT OF CONSIDERING "YOUR PATH"

I've alluded to this before, but if you lived in Southampton like me and you wanted to go to Toronto, you would not head northeast to Barrie or Huntsville. No matter your intentions, no matter how fast or carefully you drove, you would not reach Toronto by driving away from it.

The reason for this, of course, is that your destination has nothing to do with your intentions, and everything to do with your direction.

It’s a common-sense principle we abide by whenever we use a map, but it’s also a principle found in Scripture. Take Proverbs 7 which we reviewed not long ago in a post on Wrights Lane. In this passage, Solomon describes a young man who steps into the house of an adulteress. Because the young man is short-sighted and naive, he sees the encounter as a stroke of luck. After all, the woman’s husband is away—no chance of getting caught—and she has an intoxicating night of love planned for the two of them.

So, the man walks through the door. He goes inside under the false notion that there will be no consequences for his actions. He thinks can have his cake and eat it too.

But Solomon knows better. He knows this man is not exempt from all God’s warnings about sin and folly. This man is not the exception to the rule; he is the rule.

And rather than walk a unique path in which the rules do not apply, this man is on a crowded highway. Countless men and women have gone before him, under the exact same illusion.

This young man believes he is on a path to pleasure and bliss, but he is instead on a path to destruction. Solomon describes it this way: “As an ox goes to the slaughter, or as a stag is caught fast till an arrow pierces its liver; as a bird rushes into a snare; he does not know that it will cost him his life.” (7:22-23)

The story is the principle of the path at work. His fate reminds us that we cannot attain the abundant life by choosing the path to a destination of no return. The path of sin, of corruption, of laziness, or ethical compromise will only lead to one place. Because direction determines destination.

I have always remembered the principle of the path because it has countless applications for our lives. For instance:

a) You cannot reach spiritual maturity on a path of spiritual neglect.

b) You cannot reach spiritual and physical health on a path of complacency and unaddressed issues.

This final point is, if we manipulate people, hedge on the truth, trample those with less power than us, or compromise our integrity in any way, we have effectively abandoned the path of godly leadership for a path of personal destruction.

Of course, we all make mistakes. Every one of us. In our faith, marriage, parenting, finances, and leadership, we will make bad choices. And when we do, there is more than enough grace to cover and redeem our brokenness. This is the good news.

But the principle of the path should chasten us. It reminds us to be wise and clear-eyed about our daily habits.

The principle of the path means that none of our choices take place in a vacuum. Every single one determines who we are becoming. Every single step is in a particular direction on a particular path, so the question we must ask ourselves every day is this: Where do I want to go, and am I on a path that will take me there?

Sadly, I have come to this conviction almost too-little-too-late to do much good in what is left of my life. At best most days, I simply pause momentarily on an old-age path that is assuredly downhill.

During those increasingly-frequent and necessary pauses, however, I still think about the inevitable and how I want to arrive at it.