Trust the Path

I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man comes to the father except through me. John 14:6

As I walked the trails Saturday, I kicked myself for not having brought a compass. For the sake of later descriptions (like those in the last two posts), I wanted to be able to identify the direction a river was flowing or the side of the park where I found a certain landmark. Part of this excursion was preparation for one of my mission trips this summer, where I'll be doing reconnaissance work producing maps and recording the locations of restaurants, places to stay, and where a certain people group lives.

I talked to Katy on the phone before I ventured into Ben Burton's woods, and she told me to be careful and to avoid getting lost. With an area of only 32 acres inside the park and city all around, getting lost didn't even strike me as a possibility. Without a compass, I had no idea what cardinal direction I was traveling at any point in time, but I never worried about where I was. At Birchmore, I had seen the map of the trail, and I trusted the path to get me back to civilization unharmed.

I realized that my faith is kind of like walking in an unfamiliar territory with no compass, with only a marked path and a surface knowledge of the roadblocks and landmarks to come. But as Christians, we're on the right path--Jesus. Even though we've never walked this road before and we can't always see what's ahead, we must trust that this Path will lead us back to where we came from: a world without a curse where we can experience full unity with the Father and one another.