The Variable LifeSampel

“Finding Your Path Forward” God is in the business of putting people on a new path. It’s a familiar place for him, too, because he goes with us as we walk. He must enjoy seeing us navigate the trail, avoiding pitfalls and cliffs. Even when we get lost in the tall grass, he’s eager to call us back on course. When God put me on a new path, it was one away from stifled, functional legalism I lived within. Some days it’s especially apparent he’s still calling me away from mediocrity. The whole thing is a process. On a new path, it’s more rewarding to ask questions than to spout off answers I previously assumed were correct. That leaves a lot more question marks, but the ambiguity is less scary and more rejuvenating than the dead end of preconceived notions. I’m grateful God didn’t give up on the former person I was. He’s exercised endless patience with all of us. Even as adults, we revert back to our timid, misguided, and selfish inner children, but he invites us to a new path. It’s a work of God that we’re able to change at all. God wants to make us better versions of ourselves, “perfect” and “holy” (Matthew 5:48, 1 Peter 1:15-16 NIV). I don’t exactly know what a perfect life looks like, but I know I’m far from it. God’s ways are right, true, and beautiful ways to live, and sometimes I cringe when I realize the ways I’ve run the other direction from that compelling life. Perhaps it’s a sign he’s still working on me, like I’m an athlete realizing what his body can accomplish if trained and disciplined. The early church leader, Paul, even used a sports analogy to describe the journey of life: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7 NIV). We don’t know what the rest of our path will look like, or even what the next steps will be, but we know God has promised to be with us on the trail, through the change and conflict, just as he’s always been. And that gives us hope our lives will amount to something, that it won’t be a waste if we’re keeping pace with the author of life and of our story.