A really hard question

Have you ever asked yourself a really hard question whose answer you really did not know. Getting to the point of asking that question itself can take years for the simple formulation of a question is not a grammatical obstacle but a spiritual one. The truth hurts. Sometimes that truth hurts the heart which heals in time. At other times the truth hurts your entire life. It puts into question your beliefs.

At some point I believe that I will not only ask the questions but have answers to share as well, for life is long in a manner of speaking. It is long enough to learn lessons worth formulating and popularising. Trivia has never been my strength. Wisdom has been my goal, but it is quite a silly goal to have when one considers its lack of measurability. Far more sense make the goals and dreams of sports heros, and yet ambition for such achievements appears not to have been in my make-up.

I decided to walk on the path which God had laid out. Robert Frost had written a poem about two roads diverging in a yellow wood, and having taking the one less traveled by. The common slogan of our day is to avoid the beaten track. We hear these poems and sayings, and already we have made up our minds as to their meanings. Meaning, then, is contextual. At a party where drugs are being handed out, the dealer will quote Robert Frost's poem and speak of going off the beaten track, as though 99% of the human population had not tried drugs, and you'd be one of the first to go on this epic journey.  Perhaps he'd even quote Dead Poets' Society's popularised saying, "Carpe Diem."  Meaning, in all its varied contexts, has lost itself.  

When first I read, "small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it," I was much reminded of Robert Frost's notion of the road less traveled.  The road less traveled is not the road of drug-taking, or any lifestyle that condones indulgence, for that road is wide and open to all.  It is an easy path to follow.  It demands as little self-control as possible, and concerns itself with itself.  Sex sells.  Alcohol is big business.  So are cigarettes.  Drugs abound.  Selfishness is natural.  This route is easy.  It works, right?

Sex.  Beautiful, sensuous and intimate sex.  Or pornographic, perverted, abusive.  Alcohol.  Losing your inhibitions and having fun.  Or drinking till you forget where you are, who you are and what you've just done.  Cigarettes.  Destress and social.  Or breath-taking, time-wasting and cause for bad breath.  Drugs.  Open your mind and allow you to travel in your imagination.  Or make you lose your mind and lose control over your life.  Selfishness.  You get what you want when you want it how you want it.  Or you become disliked and lonely and miserable.  These paths are easy to get onto.  Not so easy to get off.  But if you are on one of them, and you want to get off, the good news is that there is not a black hole on either side.  There is not a vacuum of emptiness surrounding you.  

God is there, waiting to pick you up, for He knows you and loves you and wants to bring you onto his path, the path of righteousness, the path that leads to true enlightenment, besides a host of other things you have always desired deep down in your heart but never had the guts to admit, such as true love, faith in goodness, hope in heaven, and a joy and peace that comes only by living in truth, and with a clear conscience.  It is this to which we are called, and nothing less will satisfy our deepest yearnings for fulfillment, who we can find in one Person, and one Person alone, the Son of God, Jesus Christ.