Guides Me Along The Right Paths

The Lord is My Shepherd…   he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. (Psalm 23:3)

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)

           You know this psalm, so you know this verse. Have you thought about it. Again, there’s the “Ah yes, this is the life!” bit about his refreshing our souls and guiding along the right paths. But in the last verse, we were hanging out in green pastures and dipping our toes in quiet waters. Why do we have to leave? It’s like Peter on the mount of transfiguration. “Hey, Jesus, this is a good place for us to be. Let’s build a conference center and hotel!

           And there’s the whole Robert Frost thing about two roads. The broader, straighter path is so much more inviting.

           Oh, I’ve just stubbed my toe.

           Is that poison ivy?

          More importantly, what’s that I see up where the road curves? Lions? Tigers? And Bears? Oh my!

          No, Jesus, I really think we need to take the other path.

          On top of not wanting to go on any trail, and not being too sure about the trail chosen, have you ever thought about God’s motivation? He guides me along the right path because He loves me! That’s what we want it to say, and it’s true, but that’s not what the passage says. He does it so that I’ll reach my full potential! Well, that’s part of what it means that He loves you – if you define full potential in the same way He does. But that’s not what the passage says, either. It says He leads us along the right path for His names’ sake.

          For some, this will suggest that He leads us where He leads us to build His ego. It will look good on His resume. In some ways, this is closer to the truth, in spite of its deliberately negative spin. Consider some of the celebrities you’ve heard about. Some of them seem to go out of their way to make sure that they are seen. They call press conferences so they can donate one one-hundredth of what they make in a year to a charity, and we’re all supposed to say, “Oooo, ahhhhhhh. What a niiice person.” And then there are celebrities who interrupt their day to do something nice and walk away. Who was that masked man on the white horse?

          The latter type is closer to what is being described here. God’s names are representations of who He is. He does what He does, because that’s the kind of god He is, His name describes some part of who He is. Sometimes, that rubs the ego raw. It’s easy to pick up on one piece, or one part of who God is or miss another. For me in this case, it’s easy for me to pick up on God being loving. He guides us all along the right paths. It’s part of who He is and has nothing to do with me. He may as well be a robot or a machine because there’s nothing personal in it. But the reality is that God is also personal. He leads me along the right path because that’s the sort of God He is, but the sort of God He is is also intimate and immanent. We may emphasize characteristic A over all the others at one moment for some reason, but that doesn’t mean the others have gone away or never existed.