“Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you. Ponder the path of your feet; then all your ways will be sure.” – Proverbs 4:25-26
“Look where you want to go” is an adage of motorcycle safety. If you hit some debris or a slick patch, and the wheels start to wander, you have to fight the instinct to look down, or you’ll go down. Your body is connected to the machine and your hands will follow your gaze. Life works the same way.
Mercifully in the rest of life, consequences do not usually follow distraction as immediately as they do on the road, but follow they will. You can’t put living an upright life on autopilot. If you’ve been a Christian for some time, it’s easy to think of your faith as something you got squared away a while back. Jesus died for me and I trusted in him, great! Now on to the business of living.
Truth is, we’re not so good at this business of living. You pass a lot of people walking a lot of different paths. Or you see something shiny under an evergreen twenty yards off the path, and before you know it, you’re in a ditch with a twisted ankle.
This proverb reminds us to do the daily, hourly work of looking at the path ahead of you. If the Christian life is one long walk, you can certainly take breaks and stop to look around you, but you should know when and why you’re doing this. You’re recharging to keep walking.
The distractions often come while you’re walking. You slip into a trance. You’re walking but you forget where you’re going. Something off-trail looks more fun, more interesting. You’re off to check it out. An hour later, lost and mudstained, you wonder how you got there in the first place. You don’t remember ever making a decision…it just happened. That’s the danger—distraction comes when you’re not looking for it.
The good news is you’re not walking alone and you don’t have to look that far ahead. Jesus walks with us and leads us. Pondering the path of your feet is thinking about–how you can love Jesus and people around you right now? What does it look like to keep walking on the path God has for you today? Probably nothing dramatic, and yet it won’t be wholly instinctive. You have destructive habits that need breaking. Your path is both worthy and challenging enough to keep your attention.
One of our world’s eternal lies is that you’re probably meant to be someone else. If only you could figure out who or what that is, you’d be happy. The truth is, God means for you to be a redeemed version of yourself. That’s plenty hard, but it’s fulfilling. God wants you to connect with Him today. He’s got specific people, places, and jobs for you today. There are sins He wants you to resist and break away from today. Jesus is going ahead of you and leading you on that path. It’s our job to follow.
