The Long & Winding Road

The last time I was in Wilmore, Kentucky attending a class at Asbury, a good friend of mine and I took a walk. We were staying with a professor who rents out extra rooms in his house to Asbury students who come for a week long class. He lives outside of town down a country road.
We started off on our walk and came to something very unusual - the road went underwater! Well, maybe the more accurate way to describe it is that a creek that is usually dry was full and the water running through it came up over the road. It wasn’t very deep. If we had decided to wade across it, the water might have come up to mid-calf level. But we decided to turn around and go the other way so we wouldn’t get our feet wet.

Sometimes our life is like this. We’re walking along with things going pretty smoothly and all of a sudden we come across a stream that we aren’t sure we want to cross. It might not even be a deep stream but we don’t want to get our feet wet. So we turn around and go a different direction.

The next day, my friend took another walk. (I had homework to do) She came to the stream and this time it was river. She decided to wade through it and the water came up to the middle of her thigh. She’s about my height so that gives you an idea of how deep the water was. She told me that before she went through, she prayed, “Lord, tell me what to do.” She heard the answer, “Go slowly and you’ll be just fine.” She ended up wading through the river twice – one time going and one time coming back.

Proverbs 3:5 says Trust the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

Our paths often are not straight – even when we are trusting God. We are going to have twists and turns in our road. We’re going to encounter streams and rivers we must wade through. The road can be anything but a straight shot. That’s not what the verse necessarily means. What it means is that when we trust God we travel the road He wants us to be on – even with all the twists and turns.

So wear a good pair of walking shoes!