Archive for November, 2011

I read an interesting passage in Matthew today while we were in church that has been stuck in my head all day today. The passage is from chapter 9, verses 13-14 and it comes from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount:

¹³ “You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. ¹⁴ But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.”

I think what I’m most interested in with this passage is how obvious it should be, but how easily we overlook its message. Sometimes we can look around our surroundings and see an entire caravan going down the highway to hell (or, in the Greek version, destruction), and it makes me wonder why we don’t try to turn our own vehicle around. There’s this broad highway full of people traveling the wrong way, and rather than try to drive back against the flow, we just continue down this path.

Meanwhile, there are so few people in the world who take the time to find the narrow road that leads toward Heaven. We don’t see as many people alongside us, so we wonder if we’re even going the right way. Clearly, with so few people using this road, it must not be the road we thought we wanted to be on.

Think about any road trip you’ve ever been on. There’s no feeling less reassuring on a road trip than when the map or GPS says “turn right at County Road 45” and it’s an empty, gravel road with rows of corn on either side. We look down thinking, Surely, this can’t be the road we’re supposed to be on. We long for the security of the highway, where so many cars are traveling the same direction that they clearly all must know where they’re going. But everybody on a highway to nowhere doesn’t accomplish anything positive, even if we are all driving the same direction.

Every once in a while, stop and take a look at your surroundings. Are you and those around you just following along the same highway, secure in knowing that everyone else is doing the same (even if the direction you’re headed isn’t the direction God wants you to be traveling)? Or are you pushing yourself and trusting God to lead you down the narrow, difficult road that few ever find (the road to Heaven)?

It’s easy to follow the pack. But rarely is it the best way to travel.

-Mike