Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Proverbs 3:5-6 ESV

            These wise words of counsel harkens back to the wisdom of Proverbs 1:7, and thus to the very foundation of wisdom itself. God is at the beginning of all wisdom, as He is at the center of all understanding. Failing to acknowledge God in all our ways is an act of willful ignorance, that will necessarily send our path in life here and there and everywhere as we try to find some way apart from the cardinal directions. We will subject ourselves to futility in reliance on our incomplete understanding. We shall move without going anywhere.

            God’s understanding is alone perfect, and perfectly perfect, only He knows the way in its entirety. When He makes the path straight, it is to say that He makes it clear, and by this we must mean that He makes a path. The path in itself is a great advantage, for the path sets direction, and direction gives purpose, and purpose gives meaning, and meaning satisfies our great want. Any aspect or portion of our lives in which we refuse to acknowledge God will be found meaningless, and ultimately unfulfilling. All these will amount to nothing more than a confused jumble of words cluttering an otherwise good narrative.

            Here we must pause to clarify the goodness of the narrative is not due to its lack of difficulties, or tragic moments; but to the fact that it is a narrative with beginning, middle, and an end which shall see the beginning of the better story to come happy enough, and indeed more than happy enough, to redeem whatever precedes it. In the same way the path is not good because it is easy, and goes only through the good lands; but because it is a path and it goes somewhere worth going. Even if the path seems to lead us back to where we had started, as it did for C. S. Lewis, we will find we have indeed gone somewhere worth going. The goodness then is from God, and is a greater goodness than that which we might ask for. So rather than asking for ease we ought to ask for directions at ever turn.

            But we hate to ask for direction for it surely means that we don’t know, and this truth offends our foolish pride. Why we find ourselves so attached and sensitive to the unreasonable demands of pride is a mystery. It is not one which needs be solved, but one, as these verses and others tell us, that needs be done away with. Learn this lesson, that God knows the way better than you ever could, and that He is able to write the better narrative. Hand Him the pen and let Him chart the course and you shall find at some point there is indeed a course. If you hold onto to that pen then on a day of terrible judgement you shall discover that there was at the end no narrative, no path, only scribblings as of a madman that led nowhere and accomplished nothing. Gaze upon the works of those who trusted in themselves and acknowledged not God, and tremble.

Prayer

            Lord humble us to know what we do not know, to see our need of You who knows all. Take our pens from our hands, and with them write the narratives of our lives as You will. Make us to walk Your path for there is truly no other. To your glory we pray these things in the name of He who opened the way Jesus the Christ. Amen.

Songs

Jesus cast a look on me

Guide me O Thou great Jehovah

If Thou hast drawn a thousand times

Beams of Heaven

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