Today is Ash Wednesday, the
first day of the season of Lent, when we are urged to spend time in self
examination and make plans to ‘give up’ something like chocolate or novels.
Sometimes though, self examination takes the form of looking at the journey we
are on. It can be a good time to map out where we are and where we are going on
the road of life.
Roads are everywhere. Some
are wide, some are narrow. There are interstates and country roads, city
streets and village lanes. Tracks in the woods (like at the left) are just as
much roads as giant concrete interchanges. Jesus warns his disciples to “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is
the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter
through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and
only a few find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14) Robert Frost echoes this
in his well known poem, “The Road Not Taken”:
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.
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.
In
life, as Frost notes, we have to make choices about the road we take. He says
“I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
Throughout literature and movies, we find the road image again and again.
Consider the Yellow Brick Road
in Oz, or the Road to Mordor. The Odyssey
and Canterbury Tales both take place
as people travel as do Don Quixote
and Huckleberry Finn. Of course in
these works, the road symbolizes the protagonist’s search for meaning or a
solution to their problems.
A long time ago, in “The Little Colonel's House Party”, I read a story about Robert Lewis
Stephenson and how after his death, the chiefs of Samoa built a road to honor him.
In the book it was called “The Road of the Loving Heart” and was a reoccurring
theme throughout the series as the girls turned into young women and got
married, they all tried to keep ‘building a road of the loving heart’ for
people around them. Angry words and wrong choices left rocks in the road for
others to stumble over, but doing right and being loving created a smooth
highway. It always reminds me of Isaiah 40:3: “Make straight in the desert a
highway for our God.”
Isn’t that what we should
be trying to do-build a smooth, straight road that points to God, so that
others can find their way? Have you ever stopped to consider what ‘road’ you are
on in your spiritual journey? Are you searching for a solution to life’s
problems like Don Quixote or Odysseus? Do you need to find a way home like
Dorothy and Frodo? Is the road you are on just a way to get from here to there
as for Huck Finn and Chaucer’s folks? Is your road a “narrow road that leads to
life”, a “highway for our God”? Are you building a ‘Road of the Loving Heart’?
If you are like me, your road and journey is a little bit of all these
things. We learn about life and God as
we ‘travel life’s highway’. John Bunyan put this whole journey into the
allegorical story, Pilgrim’s Progress as
did Dante with The Divine Comedy.
During
Epiphany I explored two parallel passages from Paul’s letters as
ways to help us live and remain faithful to our life in Christ. We are to
‘rejoice always’, ‘pray without ceasing’, ‘give thanks in all things’ so as to
welcome the Spirit and live in the peace of God. At first these seem
impossible, but maybe there are ways to use them as cobblestones for our
roadway. When we live into the promises of our God, we can build a 'road of the loving heart'. Through Lent I’ll be traveling with Jesus to Jerusalem and with Dorothy’s along the Yellow Brick Road. How will their different, yet perhaps not so different roads inform my Lenten journey and yours? If you are looking for a new focus for this Lent, come along on this adventure.
