The narrow and trodden path was lined by towering green and brown corn stalks. Beneath her feet, she could feel the uneven surface and sharp stones through her shoes. She could try to shout to the others nearby because that unnerving sound had to be those of weary feet dragging in the distance. She saw a few others at the start even people she knew, all readying themselves for their journey. Everyone was nervously jittering before it was their time to go because on this trip there was no companionship. No two people stood together; one person per path.
She couldn’t tell how long she’d been walking and didn’t know how far away the end would be. She didn’t hear any voices, and apart from the stalks to her side and the grey-tinged sky above, the dusty path about the width of both her feet pressed firmly together was her focus. Eventually, the mixture of bends, slopes, and depressions became her comfort. She may not know where the end was but the fact that it was a defined path meant two things, someone created it and there must be an end.
She pondered who would have been the person to make the path, whether like her they were afraid of heights or loved reading or even hummed songs under their breath while they were focused on a task. All that mattered was that she was grateful for this someone, as the main security seemed to be that someone before her, knew the way and marked it out for her. She wasn’t sure what the others' paths looked like, but hers was known, not necessarily to her, but to someone.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in caves or cornfields isolated from others’ journeys. In fact, we sit in the same rooms and have front-row seats on some people’s journeys. Then our understanding and finite knowledge see what is and what isn’t from a comparative point of view. For this reason, we see, Caucasians and Black, able-bodied and disabled, successful and struggling. We can’t seem to properly assess our context without having something else or someone else as a measuring stick. We know what is poor because we understand what is rich. We deprecate what is wrong because we all have a sense of what is right.
Your perspective of yourself and your judgement of your path naturally get pulled into the comparison box because … how else will you be able to judge yourself fairly?
Your path gets judged according to God’s plan, that’s how. He is the one who has gone before you and marked out the way. He has removed the overhanging branches, and the stumbling stones and set a journey as unique as the colour of your eyes and the ridges on your fingertips.
You must look at both the positive and negative occurrences in life and realise that God deals with you the way He deals with you. You may be compelled to ask how did that positive thing happen for that person and not me, or equally, why did that negative thing happen to them but not me. Every person who ever walked this earth from Adam and Eve to the present day is the one-of-a-kind handiwork of God. Not even identical twins are identical and reincarnation is not real.
In this new year and for every year God continues to bless us with life, I implore all of us to pay attention to God’s plan and our predestined path. We’re not blind, we can see what is happening over on the other person's path, but our response must never be pity for ourselves or jealousy of others, it must be, “God, I am hopeful and even excited to see what you have planned for ME”.
Trod along your path, give attention to your walk, consider your way, and trust God, who created the pathway that will lead you safely to the next side.
It’s not that the branches weren’t scratching her skin or that scary animals didn’t slide across her path, she just knew that no one gets lost or sidetracked on the path set before them. In your earnestness to remind me that life doesn’t have a single path, my response is, ‘to you, it may not seem that way, after all the losses, heartaches, victories, and apparent twists and turns’. However, just consider that all those events might be “the” course along which we were meant to walk as God in His infinite and unmatched wisdom has and continues to navigate our lives.
If you can say ‘I am exactly where God needs me to be’, it means that you’ve paid attention to and walked the path He’s set for you. More importantly, because you know that God doesn’t make mistakes and loves you so much, you have trusted that nothing happens by chance in your life, that His divinity has orchestrated every aspect of your life, that the things that are for you will come to you and that His grace and mercy has and shall continue to fill the paths He’s set before you.
My way and my walk are set by God and I gladly, confidently, and trustingly walk along it.
And when we obey him, every path he guides us on is fragrant with his loving-kindness and his truth. Psalm 25:10 TLB
Love Ya!
Krystal Baynes-Hoseinee
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