Crossroads

Been at a crossroads lately? I don't mean the one in Mississippi where blues singer Robert Johnson supposedly made a pact with the devil to have his dreams fulfilled. I mean a crossroads where dreams are secondary to survival. Many times in life we come to the end of a trail to a fork in the road where we are forced to make a small or even a life-changing decision. No one likes to be re-directed--the way we were going was predictable and comfy.

When I was in my late teens, I worked at Cypress College in southern California as a classroom assistant where mentally challenged adults learned to acquire independent living skills. One day they would make their own hot lunch in the classroom kitchen to eat it on site. The next day they took a sack lunch somewhere on campus. Another day they would take money to the campus cafeteria where they learned to navigate through the maze of students, buy and eat their lunch, then head back to the classroom. Sometimes one of my "special friends" would get off the prescribed course and simply sit down in front of the door they thought was the one to enter. When it was locked, they knew no better than to just stay put. It was my job to find them. The leader of the program told me that they would stay there until they died if we didn't go after them. Some of us would do the same if we were stuck at a crossroads of decision.

In Jeremiah 6:16, the prophet writes not only to the hearer of the day but to those of us in the future.

This is what the LORD says:“Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’"

It is not a sign of weakness when we have no idea where to go at some points in life. It always gives us the opportunity to look to God for direction. I believe He allows His children to end up at a crossroads from time to time for just that reason. In the passage the Lord says to ask for the ancient paths--the tried and true path which has served as a sure highway for believers in the past. We must also consider the way taken by those who have walked away from God. Then He says, ask for the good way. Isn't it interesting that, as adults, we still need to heed this advice?--you'd think we would have learned. But we still make fatal choices that send us headlong into the ditch.

The last verse of this passage is the sad part: with all the wisdom they were given, they chose to not walk in it. I am challenged to make a covenant with God and myself to scrutinize my life direction, what I allow my eyes to see, my mind to ponder and my flesh to pursue. God help me to take the good way so not to find myself getting off track to languish, or worse, to die at the threshold of a locked door.