All the Difference

Branches scratched at my arms, thorns dug into the space between my jeans and my shoes. Every third step saw me grabbing desperately for something to hold on to, my body either falling or swaying dangerously.

Finally I reached the top of my wooded mountain. Standing triumphant, I tipped my face to the sun and soaked in my victory. A moment later, I was back on my journey.

It wasn't long before my feet hit the forest floor. Going up and over the twenty foot mass of fallen trees and brush was my choice; I easily could have entered the woods from the other side. But I relished the adventure, I wanted to do it my own way.

Sitting on an old cement block in a pool of sunlight, I pulled an antique book from my backpack. Opening the familiar pages, I began to read aloud the words of poets who penned their words a hundred years before my time. My own Dead Poets Society.

At seventeen years old, they were some of my gods. My worship was the breath I gave their words, transforming text to life.

But inside, deep within heartache and disappointment, the void I longed to fill remained.

Today I worship a God who is alive, and that void is gone. I no longer feel the need to climb through dangerous obstacles to find that pool of sunshine, because it radiates from within me. The Book I read from doesn't have cracked and faded leather, but its words are timeless.

I think of the Robert Frost poem that ends with these famous lines:

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."

Before Christ, I thought of myself as an adventurous young woman who would do anything to take the road less traveled. But I didn't realize that the path of individualism I thought I was foraging was actually a wide, well traveled highway. Seeking to find my own personal god, I was accompanying billions who quested for the same.

While walking what was really the wide path, I found the narrow one.

"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)

"Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'" (John 14:6)

And that has made all the difference.