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PROGRAM D-8166
My guess is most of you learned this famous poem by Robert Frost in high school or college. It begins like this:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.
Then took the other, just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Life is full of pivotal points—times when we are faced with decisions and choices that make a difference in our lives. This poem captures one of those pivotal moments and reminds us that the choices we make at critical junctures in our lifetime have enormous impact on just where we will go, who we will be, and what we will do. For those of us who are disciples of Jesus Christ, those choices will also determine how effective our lives will be for his glory.
Robert Frost expresses well this quandary of life’s crossroads in this simple but beautiful poem. He expresses the feelings we’ve had many times as we were faced with decisions. In looking back, we wonder, Did we make the right choice?
Have you ever thought about decisions you made that set your life’s course and wondered where you would be now if you had made a different one? Frost gives vent to these shared musings: “I shall be telling this with a sigh, Somewhere ages and ages hence. . .” In other words, I’ll always wonder what life would have been like had I chosen the other road.
Every person faces these pivotal life-moments, but for those of us who are believers, are we left, like Frost, to simply survey the prospects of the roads in front of us and make our best guess? He decides to choose the road less traveled, but was that the best choice? What guided him in that decision—simply some inner curiosity? Is that the best we can do?
I want to examine what the Bible has to say about life at the crossroads. I want to make sure that we’re not just taking our best guess through life because, as disciples of Jesus Christ, we have his power to guide us through life at the crossroads.