Two Different Paths

 

In his classic poem The Road not Taken, Robert Frost described stopping at a fork in the road as he took a walk through the forest. The poem begins this way:

 

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;

 

We often come to similar forks in the road in life. We can choose the worldly life, described in Psalm 1; this is the man who stands in the path of sinners and takes his seat among the ungodly. We can also choose the Christian life, where we put on the full armor of God and cultivate the fruit of the Spirit. The choice is completely up to us. 

 

Proverbs 5 mentions different paths. While giving advice to his son Rehoboam, Solomon told him to avoid the path of the adulterous woman because “her feet go down to death, her steps lay hold of hell (v.5).” That word used for path in Hebrew refers to that which is movable, and has been translated elsewhere as slippery. Today we speak of something as a slippery slope, meaning that if Rehoboam began to spend time with this woman, before he knew it, he would be slipping and sliding down the path that would ruin his life. 

 

Sometimes in a store or mall I see signs posted, alerting shoppers that someone has recently mopped and the floor is still wet. That is what Solomon is doing here. He is putting out one of those yellow wet floor signs for Rehoboam, warning him that he is certain to fall if he isn’t careful. Instead of bruising his tailbone, Rehoboam could lose his life. 

 

At the end of that same chapter Solomon wrote, “For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and He ponders all his paths (v.21).” This word paths is different than the one in the fifth verse. This Hebrew word describes the path made by wagons and horses where there were no paved roads. This word came to speak of a person’s habits because following the same path over and over would develop grooves in the ground. A person’s paths were the things he did repetitiously. The warning is clear: do not follow the slippery path of the adulterous woman, because the Lord knows your paths. God knows full well the patterns in our lives. 

 

Jesus mentioned two roads—one broad and easy to traverse, and the other narrow and difficult. Many, He said, meaning the majority, travel the broad road, and few—the minority—travel the narrow.  

 

Frost concluded his poem this way:

 

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.

 

Few people choose the straight and narrow road. It is unfortunately the road less traveled by, but choosing it makes all the difference.