The Joys and Pains of The Road Less Travelled
The Road less travelled implies we are on a journey. The Bible is full of stories of the journeys of men who went before us. From Abraham, Moses and Joshua in the old testament to Peter, Paul and Barnabas in the new, they all had their peculiar journeys and we have ours too. We are all predestined for greatness, but what distinguishes the outcome of the various journey experiences we have (despite the hand life deals us) are the decisions we make every day.
We make 10s of thousands of decisions each day, some more important than others, each decision taking us closer to or further away from our destiny. Broadly speaking there are two routes we can take when we get to the crossroad of decision:
1. The well-trodden, tried and tested road. This is a safe road. There are many others on this road for moral support. It is the popular road, the comfortable road, the politically correct road, the road accepted by society, but we must consider where it leads. Proverbs 14:12 says, ‘there is a way that seems right to a man at the end is the way of death’.
2. As Christians we are called to walk on the road less travelled. It may not look pleasant at first and may even appear lonely, but there are hidden treasures, golden nuggets on the way and handsome rewards at the end. Isaiah 45:3 calls them the “hidden riches of secret places and the treasures of darkness”. These refer to the treasures belonging to conquered pagan nations that were hidden in vaults under the ground. They can be yours if you are willing to pay the price. Just remember that treasures are rarely found on the well-travelled road.
As a child, I often went with my parents to the village to visit family. The villagers were mainly subsistence farmers, so each day they would journey on foot down the dirt roads to their farms, which were sometimes miles away. At harvest time, they would spend whole days at a time on the farm. They would make thatch huts for shelter and the woman would make lunch for the family and hired hands from the freshly harvested crop on an open fire made from firewood that had been gathered in the bush.
The younger children would go berry hunting and I soon learnt that the biggest and juiciest berries could only be found deep within the thickets: The road less travelled. There were thorns and thistles, sometimes snakes and scorpions, to contend with. But we had our cutlasses to cut through the thicket and to deal with the snakes and scorpions on the way. The berries were often covered in soldier ants (fire ants). But we looked beyond these perils to the “joy that was set before us”: a basket of juicy berries.
In a Christian walk, we too need to overcome the snakes, scorpions, thorns and fire ants of life in order to get the juicy fruits of eternal life. Snakes signify evil powers, scorpions: wicked people, thorns and thistles: the cares of this world and ants, although a symbol of hard work and dedication, comes from a root word meaning to creep, cut and destroy (and I will add to the definition “to cause pain”, as I remember on occasions been stung by a swarm of vicious fire ants, not a pleasant experience!)
Please be reminded that Luke 10:19 gives us authority to trample over snakes and scorpions. The sword of the spirit, the word, is our cutlass with which we cut through the lies and shenanigans of the enemy. The battle lines have been drawn and we come fully dressed and equipped for battle. So let’s rise and take courage as we “fix our eyes on the prize” like Yeshua and follow the directions of Holy Spirit to walk the road less travelled.
Your journey may not be as dramatic as Abraham who was asked to leave his homeland or Moses leading Elohim’s people out of slavery or even Paul pioneering the preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, but we all have our individual journeys and allotted assignments on the road less travelled.
Let’s incline our ears to the Lord for instructions for the journey ahead knowing that He is with us and He will surely reward us with juicy, mouth-watering fruits of the kingdom: righteousness, peace & joy and so much more, not just here on earth but also the world to come. Amen!
