There’s an inherent understanding
in the Christian walk that our best path is the one that God blazes for us. It’s amazing, in fact, to think how much love is revealed in the fact that He creates a personal custom-made path for us that only we ourselves can walk with Him. Thinking of it that way, we are often ashamed of the ease with which we tend to abandon it and stubbornly wander off to test this pit or that quagmire. If you have walked this path, you know that no matter how often we wander, He has never failed to hold out a strong arm of rescue, even carrying us while our battered spirit is healing from the fall.
The truth is that while we have the ability – and heaven knows, the tendency – to leave the trail, we really have no other way except that path to get where we’re destined to go. Though we test the truth a thousand times, we always find that it’s the walk closest to Christ that satisfies our soul’s deepest desires. The path He designs is awe-inspiring in its ability to shape and change us. At times it’s an easy trail – doors of blessing just seem to open out of the blue, and the pieces fall into place. Other times the opposite is true – there are no doors offering a way out of our troubles, or they maddeningly close, one after another, and no way seems clear, leaving us struggling with frustrations, anxiety, and pain.
When you think about it, it seems odd that we react that way. After all, it’s the open doors that call us to reach most deeply into our storehouse of abilities and expend ourselves the hardest. They bring us endless amounts of work that can often consume us with effort and stretch our abilities beyond their limits. Closed doors, on the other hand, bring no work at all; there is no ability to reach inside ourselves to open them, try as we may. In fact, often, they appear to us as no doors at all – leaving us staring at an empty expanse of wall without even a sign posted to guide our way.
Of course, our anxiety when we are at a wall is not due to a fear of what will come, or even a fear that nothing will come, but rather to our fear of having no solution inside ourselves. Having to wait for an answer from outside ourselves…
… having to trust our fate to God.
For you are my lamp, O LORD: and the LORD will lighten my darkness. For by you I have run through a troop: by my God have I leaped over a wall. As for God, his way is perfect; the word of the LORD is tried: he is a buckler to all them that trust in him.