A Minute Meditation

The little boy was helping his younger sister up a steep mountain path when she complained, “This isn’t a path at all, it’s all rocky and bumpy.” The older brother smiled and said, “Sure it’s a path, the bumps are to climb over.”

In our journey to the kingdom, we, too, can sometimes think that the path is nothing but rocks and bumps. We need to remember that “the bumps are to climb over.”

It was Jesus who told us that “narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” From the viewpoint of the little girl and the world around us, it isn’t a path at all for most are looking for the broad way “that leadeth to destruction.”

Jesus reminded us concerning the broad way that “many there be which go in thereat.” The broad way always has a traffic jam on it while the way up to the Kingdom is narrow and uncrowded.

Which way are we going? How crowded is the way we are traveling? If we find that we are moving along with the world, we need to check our road map to make sure we haven’t made a wrong turn somewhere. This can happen so easily. One can get turned around and suddenly find themselves going in the exact opposite direction to their desired destination.

In our way of life, do we find that we are going and doing pretty much like our worldly neighbors and associates? If we discover that we are going and doing, playing and eating with those who do not know the Lord Jesus Christ something could be wrong. If we find that our talk is mostly about our work, our gardens, our homes, our automobiles and our sports and not about our hope and the promises of God, then it could be we have made a wrong turn. We had better pull off the road and check our bearings. Our road map is our Bible and we need to ask ourselves how often we refer to our guidebook of life. It is no use thinking we can remember the way for “Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.”

Don’t worry about the bumps because we need to realize that these are simply there to help us climb up and over. Again it was our Lord who told us, “He that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations.” He reminds us that “in the world, ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”

There has to be something to overcome or it is impossible to overcome. Be thankful that God, in His loving mercy, has promised us, through His son, that in the world we shall have tribulation; but in spite of this, we are to be of good cheer. Why? Because Jesus overcame and we can, too. Yes, our trials and troubles which might have been seen as problems are not really problems at all. They are simply opportunities for us to show God that we are climbers and these light afflictions are simply there for us to overcome and climb over on our way to the Kingdom.

Viewing it this way, we can join Paul in cheerfully saying, “Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”

“Wherever I go, there I am.” This little saying is so obvious one would think that it did not need saying, yet we constantly hear of people sometimes traveling great distances to “get away from it all.” When they get “there,” they haven’t gotten away from it all after all, for they took it with them.

Too many people think that they will be happy “when.” When they get out of school, when they move, when they get a car or a better car, when they get a home or a bigger home, when they get married, when they have children, when the children are older, when the children are grown, when they get out of debt, when they retire … all through life they spend their time “whenning” and then in their advanced years they look back and recall the good old days “when.”

The problem is not where we are or what we have. If we are in the business of manufacturing misery, then we keep right on turning it out even when we try to “getaway from it all.” We simply take our miserable thinking with us. If we decide to be happy we can also take that with us. Paul said, “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.”

Outside circumstances do not really dictate our happiness or misery, our thoughts do that. It is not necessary for us to travel to find happiness or get away from misery. “Wherever I go, there I am,” and our carry-on luggage will always include our own mental attitude. Abraham Lincoln said that “most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

Of all the people on the earth, we ought to be the happiest. Paul felt this way and told us 19 times in four short chapters in Philippians to be happy, to rejoice, to be filled with gladness. He said, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” He could and we can, too. Paul was in prison when he wrote this letter on how to be happy and we might think that no one could talk this way being chained to a Roman soldier, but he did.

When we consider the fact that all things are working together for our good, we should be encouraged to accept the few little problems that come our way realizing that God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness. All things really does mean all things, and so we can sing “if thou but suffer God to guide thee, and hope in Him though all thy ways, He’ll give thee strength whatever betide thee, and bear thee through the evil days.”

Whenever we are tempted to feel discouraged or downcast, we should sing the question and the answer we have in our hymn, “Why should His people now be sad? None have such reason to be glad, as reconciled to God.”

We do sing this. We need to live that which we sing. In another hymn, we ask God to “help us this and every day to live more nearly as we pray.” We need to live more nearly as we pray and more nearly as we sing, as well. Believing this, we can really mean it when we sing “Father, I ask that all my life may be overruled by Thee; the changes then that surely come I shall not fear to see.”

Many of our hymns will help us totally to commit our lives to God and “trust in Him in all our ways.” “Take my life and let it be, consecrated Lord to thee” becomes our goal in life and the “wherever I go, there I am” will also mean that He is there as well, for He has promised “never to leave us or forsake us.” With joy then we sing our “Take myself and I will be, ever, only all for Thee.