Have you ever thought about how many times the Bible uses words like way, path, or steps to describe our lives? From the moment of our birth, we are on a journey. We seem to understand innately, whether or not we believe in God, or the Bible, or sin, or the cross, that life consists of taking one step after another toward a destination.

A path must lead somewhere.

A journey must have a destination.

Steps must take us from one level to another.

Proverbs 4 develops this idea by presenting two journeys, with striking differences.

Proverbs 4:18-19, 25-27 – But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, that shines brighter and brighter until the full day. The way of the wicked is like darkness; they do not know over what they stumble. … Let your eyes look directly ahead and let your gaze be fixed straight in front of you. Watch the path of your feet and all your ways will be established. Do not turn to the right nor to the left; turn your foot from evil.

This book of Proverbs is a plea from a father to a son to choose the path of his life wisely, holding fast to the pearls of God’s wisdom his own parents taught him and he is now handing down to the next generation. I believe he speaks from experience, having tried both the path that God set before him, and tasting the world’s temptations to leave the God of his youth. At the end of his life, he realized how foolish he had been, and turned back gladly to God’s path.

Every morning is an opportunity to progress down the path of righteousness and light, or wickedness and darkness. We may think that one little decision isn’t important, that we can live and walk with one foot on God’s path, and the other following our own willful ways, but that’s a deception. We are either headed to one destination or the other.

Each one of us will come to a fork in the road, when God speaks to our hearts and urges us to follow His Son, Jesus. We may be quite far down life’s path when this happens, and until He speaks, completely unaware there is another way. The Holy Spirit will open our eyes. Where we once saw only our own path and its imagined destination – career, success, a family, fame, or fortune – another path has appeared before us, inviting us to change our destination. We can’t see the end; it quickly curves around the bend, and we don’t know what God has in store along that path, but He whispers to our hearts that He promises to take this path with us, every step of the way, and a glorious eternity is ours if we receive His offer of grace. We must be willing to get off the road to destruction to take the path of repentance and become a follower and disciple of His beloved Son.

The book of Acts is the history of the early church, the establishment of what we know as the New Testament faith and belief in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus – the fulfillment of God’s plan for redemption for all mankind. Don’t you find it interesting that these early believers referred to their new life in Christ as “The Way” (Acts 9:2; 19:9,23; 24:14,22)? The redeemed life, the saved life, the wise life, is the Way.

Which path are you on? Have you begun the journey of a relationship with Jesus, or are you still stumbling down the path of life in darkness? Which path will you teach your children?

Matthew 7:13-14 – Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

John 14:6 – Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

(Robert Frost, The Road Less Traveled)