It was beginning to drizzle a cold icy rain. I’d had a particularly difficult day and I was weary. She has a craft barn at her house and when I visit I often find she is in it making and creating, using her talents and gifts for such good. I was there to pick up one of those good gifts, t-shirts she’d made to distribute to the Bible Study Peeps.
In all honesty I’d planned to arrive there earlier than the dark dawning 5:30PM, but things and life, my day really, hadn’t gone as planned. She told me to come to the front door of the big house. It was supper time and I knew it. I’d missed the mark on this one, but as she always is, I knew she’d be gracious when I arrived.
I parked a few feet away from the sidewalk that diverged off from the driveway. I got out of my van and the cold rain hit me squarely on the shoulders. I grumbled inside. I was weary, worn, and cold. It was getting dark and the to-do list wasn’t yet complete. I made my way up her sidewalk, it leads to her steps. I noticed how wide is was. Perhaps it is because I’ve often walked up to houses and the sidewalk is narrow and I feel like I almost have to suck in, steady my steps, and focus as I traverse them. Some sidewalks are cracked and broken, weed covered, crooked, all manner of things, some obstacles, some just cosmetic issues. I’d never really given it much thought until I was walking up to my friend’s big house entrance. The wide, warm toned sidewalk stood out in the darkness and it curved just slightly to the right. My feet were relaxed and I didn’t have to steer myself or focus in the least as my heavy footsteps traversed the wide warm welcoming sidewalk. The thought crossed my mind that a fiat or a golf cart could just drive up to the front door of the big house, never once having a tire slip into the neat, sodded yard. I made my way up to the door. My friend answered, she is older than me but she always looks younger, lighter, more carefree than I feel sometimes. She opened her arms and hugged me, I had been quiet until then.
“Did you know you have a nice sidewalk. It’s so wide and welcoming.” Both were declarations, rather than interrogatives. She tilted her head and let out a chuckle, I thought she might comment on the randomness of my statement to her. She didn’t. She said simply the truth, “God gave me this house.” I nodded and marveled at how in His giving a gift to her at some point in history, He’d given me one too. I wondered at how on that cold and dreary evening when my heart was heavy and my burden worrisome He used a wide warm sidewalk that seemed to speak “Come to me you burdened and weary one, come walk this broad walkway to friendship.” It made me smile. It made me ponder further the sizable widths of walkways.
I thought about one in particular in the King’s Word, one that talks about broad and narrow ways.
Matthew 7:13-14 “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy[a] that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”
Some years ago I’d actually memorized it in the KJV thanks to a repeated viewing of a movie when the verse is quoted as a line, “Broad is the way that leadeth into destruction. Narrow is the way that leadeth to life everlasting.” In the movie the antagonist tosses a coin with a portion of the verse on each side to the protagonist as he urges him to make a choice. He urges him to choose the narrow way of service, rejecting and forsaking the broad way of rock ‘n roll fame. The protagonist shoved the coin down deep in his pockets having declared “broad is the road to his success” and he’s gonna go down it playing the piano, pronounced in true southern drawl “playin’ the pea-anna.”
I came back to that verse when I studied Matthew and I came away with a new understanding. An understanding not tainted by good screenplay writing and dramatic climaxes in cinematography.
Not everyone is willing to traverse the path of life that is Kingdom Living, a life lived like Jesus led, a truly sold out heart for Jesus can be people lonely. It can be hard and at times. It often times is a divisive life. Being a Christ-follower means the ease and warmth of this world are to be rejected for the sake of souls in the next. The Narrow way of Christ means recognizing and dealing with the crooked, often overgrown with sin places of an already difficult path. Not everyone welcomes the narrow way because it can be uncomfortable and hard, but the traveler on the narrow path will know he or she will never walk it alone. There will always be another right there trudging through the hard things making the crooked places straight and when the path ends and the earthly walk is over the narrow path is the one that yields,
“Well done.”
I hugged my friend as I left and I told her how much I loved her and would see her soon. I thanked her for the armload of goodies I carried back to my car. Despite carrying a physically heavy burden in the form of a package, I took those steps feeling just a bit lighter than I had before.
Priceless 