The Path Beneath My Feet
In my part of the world, January and February tend to be dark, gloomy, rainy, and cold. The warm glow of Christmas time quickly dissipates, and it can be easy to let the gloom outside our windows darken our hearts as well.
The first week of January feels like a fresh start: it’s a time of new beginnings, new goals, new opportunities, but that newness wears off, and we find ourselves discouraged and apathetic.
This time of year, God often convicts my heart with the truth that His will is to be done moment by moment, bit by bit, step by step.
Amy Carmichael is known as a great missionary hero, who saved a multitude of children from the wickedness and abuse of the pagan temple system. But she herself learned this same lesson, once remarking how she must have cut thousands of tiny toenails in the course of caring for the children God had given her to raise.
But through the tiny, menial tasks of everyday life with those children, she learned that serving God means faithfulness in the mundane as well as the grand or glorious. In fact, God’s will is not often grand, glorious, or heroic.
And yet, when we see the smallest, most tedious tasks as service to the Lord, they suddenly become highly significant. Acts of obedience, no matter how small, are of great value in the sight of the Lord. After all, He is the one who said,
“He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.” (Luke 16:10)
I tend to get caught up in my own grand, sweeping vision of what God’s will for me is. I look longingly towards whatever I feel the next big landmark will be, and in the process become discontented and disillusioned with the part of the path just beneath my feet.
Yet it is the steps I take today which propel and prepare me for that bit of life off in the distance that seems so inviting.
Because we serve a sovereign and omniscient God, we can be certain that nothing in our lives is ever wasted, so long as we walk in obedience to Him. Hebrews 12:1 gives us some perspective on this:
“Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.”
But how do we run with patience when the race set before us seems tedious and long? The next verse tells us:
“Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of God.”
The passage goes on to encourage us to consider how Christ suffered more than we ever could, “lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds” (v.3)
When we fix our eyes on the earthly aspects of our path, we become impatient, and weary. But when we fix our eyes on Jesus and remember that each step is an act of obedience to Him for the sake of His glory, the path beneath our feet becomes purposeful and we will begin to see blessings where all had seemed bleak and barren.
Whether your path today is rocky or smooth, steep or level, exciting or tedious keep your eyes on Christ and make each step an act of obedience, trusting that He knows what He is doing!
“But He knoweth the way that I take: when He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold” Job 23:10