Way leads on to way

One recent wintry afternoon, my husband and I were driving a short distance to hike a familiar trail.  We had taken this route so often that the turns came almost without thinking, right turn out of our neighborhood, left turn at the light.  

But this time, oh, we made a wrong turn.  Actually, we did not make a turn at all.  At the light, we went straight instead.  Oops.  Bill looked for the first opportunity to turn around.  But I said, "I think if you go a little further, we can turn left and get back to the road."  Famous last words from someone directionally-impaired.

When we got to the junction just a few hundred yards ahead, there was a one-way sign, pointing to the opposite direction. Again, I said, "I think if you go a little further..."  And so, we turned right.

We followed the road, an asphalt loop I have run many times before.  But after one long descent, the asphalt diverged into two separate ways, dividing the familiar and the unfamiliar.  I have passed that place before and always wondered where that other way led to.

 

No signs.  No spectacular vision.  Just a road.  Another strip of pavement in the woods.  Something unknown to us.

The familiar has a strong gravitational pull.  But as Robert Frost says, "Yet knowing how way leads on to way." 

We were not lost.  We just didn't know yet where it came out.  What if...? did not limit us, but spurred us on.  

"Let's see where this rabbit trail leads," I said, not out of compulsion but curiosity.  

The  pavement wandered through woods and fields of uncut grass, past other forest service roads blocked off to traffic, over hill and dale, and eventually ascended a hill, around a sharp turn, and we were right back where we started from.  "I know exactly where we are," I said.  "I never knew before where that road headed."

As J. R. R. Tolkien stated, "All who wander are not lost."  And I would add to that, "all who wonder..."  Even right where we are. 

Anytime we try something new -- or do something familiar a little differently-- it develops new nerve synapses in our brains.  We get a little less stuck in our own ways, ruts, and the "I've always done it like this" grooves in our practices.

Way leads on to way.  When we respond to God, the next step opens up before us.  Sometimes it is an entirely new road, and sometimes a new way of seeing the familiar. ("I never noticed that before.") And sometimes eliciting a new response to what God had already placed before us.  Even in this unknown wilderness in front of us.  Even in what only appears as just another day on the trail.   There are no ordinary days.

 

Make me to know Your ways, O LORD,

teach me Your paths.

                  Psalm 25. 4

 

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference."

 

Following God and being faithful to Him is what actually makes all the difference.  God may very well place something entirely new on our radar.  But it could also require staying the same course and seeing this same familiar landscape from a new perspective.  "The road less traveled by" may be the one we are already on.  Following God does not mean always seeking a new door, but responding to what is already here, right before us.  The now we have yet failed to grasp, the now of which we are missing God's extraordinary Presence.