A Well-lit Path

Your word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my path.

“Julie, come see my wisteria! We installed a pergola this spring, and I decided to plant wisteria around the four posts so it’ll grow up and over the entire structure. Won’t that be gorgeous?”

I followed my acquaintance into her backyard, trying to mentally smooth the furrow I could feel between my eyebrows as I processed her words.

Be tactful. Be gentle. Don’t completely smash her pergola hopes and dreams, my inner voice scolded even as my thoughts swirled with frustration at whoever sold her a plant that likely wouldn’t survive more than one or two of our Minnesota winters, depending upon snow cover and prolonged subzero temps.

While I love living in Minnesota, purchasing plants from national retailers and big-box stores means we must be hypervigilant in our independent assessment of whether that particular variety can actually thrive here. Just because they stock plant varieties with glossy photo promises of pergolas draped in twisty vines and positively smothered with glorious, fragrant blooms doesn’t mean that’s what will happen this far north.

And isn’t that true with so much of life? We scroll through illusions on social media (or in books and magazines, or on television) promising that if we follow a particular diet or use a certain product, we’ll be thin or rich or wrinkle-free and thereby happy. We get sold a promise that is—at the very least—improbable, and more likely impossible to replicate because the conditions have to be perfectly perfect to get the same results.

In contrast, God is faithful and trustworthy. With him, we will never waste our time and energy chasing mirages. He doesn’t hoodwink us with earthly bait and switch tactics that leave us feeling like failures when the promise was an illusion to begin with. And when we linger in Scripture, we gratefully find clarity and truth that settles deeply within our spirits.

We can depend upon God’s unchanging character no matter the changing circumstances around us. He makes our paths straight and gives us light to see where to place our feet. He does not leave us to navigate this world in uncertainty.

Julie

Today’s Act of Gratitude

How has God provided a light to guide your feet when you’ve had a choice to make? Write a list you can refer to when life and circumstances feel uncertain.