The Road to Faith

It is amazing, to think that God can reveal Himself and His messages to us in every aspect of life, no matter how miniscule or insignificant we may consider these instances to be.

In our walks of life, it is easy to ignore what He tries to tell us, or what He tries to show us, because we are often too caught up in our own ambitions to pay any attention.

We live in a “get there fast, me first” society.  We speed on the roads when we’re late, not caring who we endanger in our paths.  We ignore people trying to merge into our lane, even if their blinkers are on.  We speed up to close gaps, even if we know someone else is trying to merge over.  We get angry, and curse at people on the road for driving slowly, even if they’re elderly people or people who are simply not used to the area.

But more often than not, we don’t see what we are doing.  We promulgate wrath and pride so much, these two destructive traits have become common in every day life.  We are to look out for “Number 1,” ourselves, before others.  Our needs come first.  Our pleasures, our convenience, everything about us.  We own the roads; everyone else needs to get out of our way.

As such, we are bred and taught to be assertive and impatient.

If something is taking too long, if something is too hard, if something isn’t working the way we want it to, we become frustrated, and this is grounds for us to give up and try something else, something easier and faster.

And this is accepted, even encouraged amongst us.

In our fast-paced lives of self-gratification, we have no place for patience.  No time to stop and smell the proverbial roses, as it were.

Look around you.  You’ll see it on the roads most prevalently, amongst traffic jams and in construction zones…

And that is where my story starts.

When you see the bright orange traffic cones, the big electric signs telling you to merge left or merge right, and the “drive slowly” or “construction in progress” signs, it is only natural to automatically come to the notion that you are going to be forced to wait.

If you’ve got somewhere to go, and this situation comes up, new feelings may creep into you.  Anxiety, for one, makes you impatient and aggravated at the workers and the slow-moving construction equipment.  You say to yourself, “why can’t they do this when no one is on this road?”  You may also say, “this is going to take forever.”

At this point, you only have two options.

On the one hand, you can sit in your car and wait for the construction worker with the “stop” sign to lower the sign and indicate that it is okay for you to proceed.  This could take moments or maybe up to a few hours.

Or, on the other hand, you can pull out and take another quicker route.

I encountered this today, on my way home from the store.  As I saw the pylons, the electric sign, the “construction in progress” signs, and the construction workers, I knew I was in for a wait.

See, they’d been working on this road for some time now, and all I can think about is “when are they going to get this blasted road done so I can get home faster?”

One worker stood before me, holding up a “stop” sign.  

Another worker was in a forklift, struggling to lift a large obstruction from the road.

Still other workers were on the side, watching the man in the forklift as he worked.  In their hands, they all had shovels and push brooms.

It didn’t say much to me at first, until God proceeded to tell me, “Look.  Watch them closely.  You’ll learn something.”

So here I am, at the front of this throng of cars, watching this guy in a forklift working to lift this gigantic object from the middle of the road.  Though modern machinery makes a lot of things easy for us, I could see that the object was heavy, and that this man, alone, was set on removing it from the road.  Time and time again he lifted it and it slipped and fell, and each time it did, he went right back in to try and pick it up.  He knew he had a job to do, and he wasn’t letting any difficulty get in his way.

The woman holding the “stop” sign in front of me had not let her hands drop, even for a moment.  She held that sign through this entire thing.

And this went on for a good 20 or 30 minutes or so.  As such, I noticed people in my side-view and rear - view mirror doing what our society has bred them to do: pull out, turn around, and drive away.  They didn’t want to take this road; it was taking too long for them, and they didn’t want to be inconvenienced any longer with having to wait.

I kept looking back and forth, between the man in the forklift hard at work, and the people in cars behind me who decided that it was too much of a hassle for them to wait…

And then it dawned on me.

This is what the road of faith is like.  

Look in the mirror.  Ask yourself how many times you’ve considered turning away, trying another road, to get to your destination?

How many times have you decided that waiting wasn’t worth it, that perseverance wasn’t worth it?

And more importantly…  How many times have you seen others of your faith who turned away, just because things got difficult, hard, or arduous?  How many times have you seen these people make the decision that another way is easier, or quicker?

As I watched these people drive away and looked back at the man in the forklift, it faintly reminded me of the struggles Our Saviour Jesus Christ has gone through for our sakes, to make our road clear and free of obstacles.  And the fact that people were turning away only made drawing the parallels so much easier.

Look at what Jesus Christ has done for us, the pain, shame, and humiliation he has endured, so that we may know true happiness in our walk with Him, on this road of faith.  

The road of faith is not easy for all, in that it calls for perseverance stronger than any human can put forth in their own power.  That is why we call to God, for Him to grant it to us when we fail to put forth even a small portion of what is required.

As I looked once again into my rear view mirror, I saw a few others pulling away to take another route.  Others, initially on their way into the queue of cars, turned to another route almost immediately, wishing to spare themselves the inconvenience of waiting for the “all clear.”

Finally, the man in the forklift set the obstruction down where it needed to be, and a man in a crane immediately went to work.  He lifted up the obstruction, and placed it into the construction area blocked off by concrete pylons, and workers immediately began dismantling it.

There was a large amount of debris left on the ground, and as such, the dutiful construction workers with push-brooms and shovels immediately went to work.  They worked energetically and efficiently, removing everything that could be a danger to the tires of the cars waiting to proceed.  

The way these people instantly went to work removing debris reminded me of how many of the apostles devoted themselves to making the road clear and safe for others to follow it.  These workers made sure that not a single dangerous rock or stone was left in the road; they wanted to ensure the safe passage of everybody.  We, as brothers and sisters of the Way, are ultimately commanded to assist others on the road, and to keep others from stumbling on anything dangerous.

Finally, the worker in front of me lowered her sign and gave me the indication to pass through.  The road narrowed significantly, but I was able to pass through by taking care to drive slowly and carefully, keeping my hands firm on the steering wheel and keeping my wheels from straying even slightly…

This, to me, signified the road to faith, and how we are to “drive” upon it.

This may not seem like a lot to those of you who are reading this, but I ask you to take to heart these two questions…

On your “drive” in the faith, will you wait for the all-clear from the Foreman’s dutiful workers?  Or will you strike out on your own to find a swifter, easier way to where you want to go, where you need to go?