I don’t know if it is my personality or my ADHD but impatience and boredom seem to hang around me more often than they do most people. I don’t follow instructions well and I don’t do great sitting around waiting. This is probably why my lovely bride calls me “Special”. This also explains why I have some problems with religion and faith.

Alexander Woollcott sums up how I viewed Christians before I met Jesus in this quote, “Many of us spend half our time wishing for things we could have if we didn’t spend half our time wishing.”

Around three years ago my entire life changed when I decided to follow Jesus but it wasn’t in the way that I expected. I expected to be changed into this guy who follows the rules and does what other Christians do but I was bored after an hour or two and wanted to go do something exciting. I made one mistake before I tried anything exciting though, I talked to religious people about what I wanted to do. They told me if I want to do awesome stuff I need this special mixture of; belief, hope, patience and prayer. They called this mixture faith. No wonder they spend more time wishing than doing. This equation looked like trying to read Egyptian hieroglyphics without the Rosetta Stone, make your best guess and hope for the best.

I didn’t have a better plan so I went along with their system for about a year and a half. I read the bible like they said, which made me more impatient because I wanted to go on some of the crazy adventures the disciples went on. My problem was I was still bored and there was a lot more waiting than doing. Something I wasn’t a fan of. So I dropped the boring plan and started trying to do awesome stuff like Jesus and his disciples did.

I quickly found out, I’m not as awesome as I thought I was. Nothing I was trying worked but at least I wasn’t bored.
Then just a few months ago Paige and I were talking about our future and what we wanted to do, where we wanted to go, we talked about Jesus and some of the things that he told us to do in the bible and we talked about his character and how we don’t believe he designed everyone to be bored and how he wants us to live exciting passionate lives. At the end of the conversation we hadn’t heard any loud or small quiet voices telling us exactly what to do but after looking at our passions and what we are good at mixed with who God is and what he told us in scripture we felt that he was telling us to just go down the road he was pointing at.

It sounded to simple. Just follow the road to Awesome and look for the road signs called Opportunities. They might be uncomfortable or different but they take you towards AWESOME. It didn’t take long for us to realize that Available and Willing to be used by God were roads the disciples took. So we took those two roads as often as we could.

People say God leads them by an audible voice telling them exactly where to go but for us it seams like God uses the same method he did with the wise men. Most people picture the three wise men following a star that floated right in front of them all the way to Jesus. Sort of like the cloud of fire that God used to lead Moses and the children of Israel around the desert with. I think God lead the wise men by pointing in a direction and said follow the road signs to Awesome and when they reached the end of the road they met Jesus who is Awesome in the flesh.

I used to think living out faith involved being bored and not doing anything wrong Then I read about Jesus and his friends going on awesome adventures and making a difference in the lives of everyone they touched. When I saw them turn the world upside down I decided to follow them down the road towards Awesome.

There is more to life than most of us have ever experienced and it starts with Jesus. And Jesus starts by sharing where he is going and asking if you want to come along on the adventure. Don’t take the boring road, it is for the people who just want to talk about doing something awesome one day. Take the other road, the one less traveled that leads to awesome.

Starting today, spend more time…

1.  Thinking for yourself.

The uneducated belief in something false that someone tells you is the greatest enemy of your own truth.  Do not let anyone tinker with the freedom of your mind.

The best thing you can do for yourself is to think for yourself.  With all of society’s influences and agendas incessantly trying to persuade you every single second, thinking for yourself is the most courageous act imaginable.  You are a unique human being with independent thoughts and free will; carry on accordingly.

2.  Being a little bit uncomfortable.

If you’re not a little bit uncomfortable on a daily basis it means you’re not growing.

Every aspect of physical and emotional growth arrives from outside your comfort zone.  So be fearless sometimes.  Have the courage to take the risks that feel right.  Go where there are no certainties.  Stretch yourself and your routines even if it means feeling a bit uncomfortable.

The road less traveled is sometimes laden with potholes, bumps, and unexplored territory.  But it is on this road where your strength grows and your dreams gradually reveal themselves.  Read The Road Less Traveled.

3.  Taking baby steps in the right direction.

Throughout this beautiful day you have hundreds of little opportunities to move your life in the direction you want it to go.  When was the last time you woke up and realized that today could be the best day of your life?

Participate in your dreams today.  Do it!  Take one small step forward; there are plenty of ways to do so.  Remember, success is something you experience when you act accordingly.  Success is not something you HAVE, it’s something you DO.

4.  Trying and failing and trying again.

Stick to it and keep moving forward, even when the path gets rough.  One of the most common causes of long-term failure is the habit of quitting after a temporary defeat.

Many of your greatest achievements will be realized when you’re completely exhausted and discouraged but still working.  Because when it’s all said and done, it really doesn’t matter if you try and try and try, and fail and fail and fail, until you eventually learn what you need to know to succeed.  It does matter, however, if you try and fail once and fail to try ever again.

Bottom line:  You only have to succeed the very last time.  Read The Success Principles.

5.  Working through your fears.

How you handle your fears will ultimately determine where you go and what you do with the majority of your life – to experience life fully or be incapacitated by the fear of it.

Although fear can feel overwhelming, and defeats more people than any other one thing in the world, it’s not as powerful as it seems.  Fear is only as deep as your mind allows.  You are still in control.  The key is to acknowledge your fear and directly address it.  You must step right up and confront it face to face.  This tactic robs fear of its power.

6.  Seeking happiness from within.

A choice, not circumstances, determines happiness.  Your happiness isn’t out there somewhere waiting for you, it’s already within you.

Each morning when you open your eyes, say to yourself:  “I, not external people or events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today.  It’s up to me.  Yesterday is gone and tomorrow hasn’t come yet.  I have just today and I’m going to be happy in it.”

7.  Practicing small acts of kindness.

Aesop once said, “No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.”

If you have big plans that can make a real impact in the lives of the masses, by all means, execute your plans.  But don’t let these big plans interfere with the small deeds you can do every day for the people around you.  If you wait until you can do something big for everyone, instead of just something small for someone, you’ll end up doing nothing at all for anyone.

8.  Tracking and measuring your progress.

You are always moving toward something, but YOU have to decide what that something is.  Don’t let someone else decide for you.  From where you stand now you can go anywhere.  There are paths leading in every imaginable direction.  What matters the most right now is the next step you take.

Decide what you truly want for yourself and those closest to you, and know that there is a way, right now, to begin the journey of getting there.  When your intentions and actions have a specific, focused purpose, each step you take will carry you closer to the realization of that purpose.  Read The Power of Habit.

9.  Letting small annoyances go.

Today, go through your day consciously.  Make an effort to notice at least one insignificant little frustration that you would normally get frustrated about.  Then do yourself a favor and simply let it go.  Experience, in this little way, the grand freedom of being in control of the way you feel.  And realize that you can extend this same level of control to every situation you encounter in life.

At any given moment, the way you feel is the way you choose to feel, and the way you react is the way you choose to react.

Written by Marc and reblogged with our deepest Gratitude from http://www.marcandangel.com/2013/01/24/9-powerful-ways-to-spend-a-day/#more-565

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By Malobi Sinha, Author

There is no substitute for good writing. If you feel you need to hone your skills, then attend a writing course. And, as with everything else in life, practice does make perfect.

There are a few rules that good writing must always follow.

1. Firstly, make sure the grammar is correct. If it is not, then for sure the article/cover letter/resume will not see the light of day again.

2. Secondly, ask yourself who your audience is – who the article is for, or targeted towards. An article targeted towards a university lecturer, for instance, would be very different to that targeted towards a peer-group.

3. Make sure what format is required for referencing, and stick to it. Case studies in Law, for instance, have very specific requirements for these.

4. Match the style of the writing to the purpose for which it is being used. For reports, and other documents, ask yourself if a paragraph could be better explained in bullet points instead of lengthy prose.

5. Do not make your sentences too long.

6. Do not explain in lengthy, unnecessary detail if not required

7. Make sure you stick to the subject that you are writing about. It is OK to diverge from it, but only for relevant issues, and make sure you return back to the subject.

8. We all like to write about something that we are interested in. However, all the writing that you do will not be in a subject that you are knowledgeable about. So, always do your research – and quote the sources.

There are very many and varied styles of writing. You should try to find your own, unique style, which encompasses all of the above, and still gives you freedom of expression. Write as much as you can. You can start a diary, and write down your thoughts for the day, and experiment with styles and forms of writing. Read as much of others’ work as possible – this will not only improve your grammar, but also your expression and style.

About the Author

Malobi Sinha spent the early years of her childhood in the freedom and vastness of Kenya, in East Africa; then her family migrated to Australia when she was in High School. Malobi is the author of ‘Savannah’, and ‘Road Less Travelled’, appraised collections of poetry, and has had literary work (articles and poetry) published in various magazines and e-zines in Australia, UK and the USA, (view Publications). She also consults in I.T. Malobi completed a Bachelors of Engineering from Monash University and a Graduate Certificate in Accounting from Deakin University. She also paints commissioned artwork, and has previously provided artwork for Corporate enviornments. Malobi enjoys playing the violin solo and in accompaniment, as well as teaching it. She lives with her husband in Victoria, Australia. Her website can be found at: http://www.malobisinha.com.

*****

Great Authors by 10 Day Book Club introduces guest bloggers. We encourage people to share their love of writing. To participate in this blog or another one that we host (http://10daybookclub.blogspot.com) send your submission to guestblog@10daybookclub.com and include your contact information within the content. All submissions must be written by the author.

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 Disclaimer:

All writing shared in our guest blog is the opinion and message of the author and is not the opinion of 10 Day Book Club, LLC.

Encourage Yourself Quote: “Sometimes the ugliest roads lead us to the most beautiful destinations!”

be blessed,
Dani ♥

The first step is to stop telling yourself these unproductive lies:

1. I can’t.

Truth be told, the only person who can tell you “you can’t” is you. If you hear these words echoing in the back of your mind, tune them out.

Your faith can move mountains and your doubt can create them. Self-doubt is the number one enemy of personal growth. It is only when you shed your apprehension about your own capabilities and self-worth that you realize how much you are capable of, and that YOU CAN in fact do it.

In the end, your doubts and your faith have something in common. They both ask you to believe in something you can’t see; you simply have to decide which one you want to believe.

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2. A good idea is all it takes.

Doing nothing gets you nothing.

An idea isn’t going to do anything for you until you do something with it. In fact, as long as that great idea is just sitting around in your head it’s probably doing far more harm than good. Your subconscious mind knows you’re procrastinating. Work that you keep postponing to complete causes stress, anxiety, fear, and usually more procrastination – a vicious cycle that continues to worsen until you interrupt it with ACTION.

Progress is measured by the fact that you’ve taken new action. If there’s no action, you haven’t truly made any progress.
3. I’ll get that done tomorrow.

Successful people have a habit of doing the things today that lazy people plan for tomorrow.

The greatest enemy of productivity is the false belief that somehow tomorrow is a better day to get something done. This is a cold, hard lie. You’ll feel the same way tomorrow and this ‘better tomorrow’ will never come.

Your real problem, then, is not your ability today, but your mindset. You must realize that ‘tomorrow’ doesn’t exist – it never will. The only guaranteed opportunity you have is the one you’re living now. This moment is life. There is no day but today.

And if you do today what others won’t, and you’re lucky enough to see another morning, you will wake up with the ability to do what others can’t.

4. I don’t feel comfortable yet.

If something makes you a bit nervous and uncomfortable, it means you’re doing it right and growing. All productive growth occurs outside of your comfort zone.

Your uneasy feelings are just anxiety and fear attempting to get in your way. Anxiety is nothing but an inner fear that repeatedly forces you to re-experience a failure before it ever happens. It’s a wasteful illusion. Accept the fact that your fears don’t stop anything bad from happening – they stop life.

So get comfortable with feeling a bit uneasy. Your desire to succeed must overpower your fear of tragedy. After all, random events in your life will always spark subconscious feelings of anxiety and fear. How you respond is all you can consciously control. Concentrate on that, and you’ll always be more productive.

5. My best work just isn’t good enough.

Whenever you get involved in a project that moves you, it’s natural to feel overwhelmingly critical of your work. This happens because you have good taste for the work at hand. You have a vision about how the end result should look, feel, or function.

There’s often a learning curve and a gap that exists between where your work quality currently is and where you expect it to be. Your taste tells you that your current output isn’t good enough yet – it’s trying to be good, but it just doesn’t taste right yet.

But it’s this good taste you have for your work that got you into it in the first place, and the reason you want it to be a certain way. This fact is priceless. It’s called passion and drive. Don’t let your desire to be better than you are deter you from the process of learning and growing into your best self.

You will get there eventually. It just takes practice. If you are still in this phase, understand that it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is to keep doing your work. It is only by doing more work that you will perfect your skill level and close the gap between your good taste and the quality of your output.

6. It’s better to quit now and cut my losses.

As Winston Churchill once said, “Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It is courage to continue that counts.”

Persistence is the mother of all productive effort. Failures, small and large, happen every day to the best of us. The strongest, most productive people aren’t the people who always succeed, but the ones who don’t give up when they lose.

In the heat of the moment when you feel like quitting, think about how far you have come and why you started in the first place. Oftentimes you’re a lot closer to making a breakthrough than you think. Some people give up their efforts when they have almost reached their goal; while others, on the contrary, conquer their goals by exerting, up until the very last possible second, more vigorous efforts than ever before.

Bottom line: Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit – KEEP GOING!

7. All pain is bad.

No matter how hard you try, you can’t completely escape pain – you can’t escape one of the essential constituents of growth. But you do still have a choice; you can give in to pain and give up or you can work through it, persevere, and gradually grow into your most desired goals.

Pain is part of the journey; your evaluation of it and what you do with it is a choice. Each painful problem has hidden in it an opportunity so powerful that it literally dwarfs the problem.

Ultimately, your greatest successes will be the byproduct of recognizing a painful problem that exists and turning it into an opportunity.

8. Structure and consistency isn’t important.

Your ability to set clear, realistic goals and then to discipline yourself to work toward them every single day for a set time, will do more to guarantee your success than any other method of productivity.

It is this consistent, focused effort that allows you to go from ground zero to surpassing those who started long before you.
9. It’s too late.

Wrong, it’s never too late to choose differently and make something new happen.

It’s an obvious point to many, but sometimes you have to say it out loud: “I will create a better future by creating a better me right now.” This moment is a new beginning. Complaining about squandered time and lost opportunities from the past is pointless; you can’t do anything about these things.

Your future is immediate. Grab it with both hands and carry it forward with you. When you come up on a roadblock and are faced with the choice of sitting down and doing nothing or doing something to make further progress, choose the latter. Think, work, climb if you have to – keep moving your future forward.

We had a plan. It was a very good plan, too.

The Plan:

• Drive our daughter’s belongings to Oakland, leaving early Thursday morning.
• Unload U-Haul trailer, return trailer to U-Haul, give giant hugs and kisses to our daughter, then get back on road.
• Drive until my eyes are bleary, then pull over at closest motel to get some much needed sleep.
• Wake early, drive home (missing L.A. traffic if at all possible!).
• Arrive home early afternoon Friday.

Sure, it was a rockstar trip up and back, but it was totally do-able.

Until we tried to do it.

After a long day of driving WAY too slow towing a trailer loaded with all our daughter’s belongings, my nerves were fried. As I watched my husband shuffle boxes and cruft to the storage unit, I made a decision. We would not stay in a motel as previously decided ~ we were going to take the road less traveled.

That’s when I found us a room in Carmel. A sweet little place complete with a fireplace and jacuzzi tub. Heaven.

Watching the sunrise over the ocean was breathtaking. I’ve never seen mist on the water before.

It’s been on our bucket list for years to visit Carmel and while we didn’t get to see much of the town in our 10-hour stay, the drive down the coast more than made up for it.

I’ve only driven the coast once before ~ way back in my twenties and I vaguely remember being terrified. It’s a twisty two-lane road with more drop offs than David cares to remember. Poor guy, he was the designated photographer and every so often he’d look down and get queasy.

But the views!

The northern coastline is vastly different to what we have in SoCal. Rocky, mountainous, with cows grazing in pastures right up to the sand in some areas. It was lovely.

So lovely in fact, David and I were dreamily making plans to retire there.

If we’d stayed with The Plan, we would’ve missed the opportunity to see wildlife *THIS CLOSE* to us.

We would’ve missed a rushing river that peeked through the woods.

Sure, there is plenty to see along Interstate 5, but we saw all that the day before. Gorgeous vistas of crops, pastures of sheep, cows, and horses. Orchards of varying sizes and colors.

I fell in love with California in those two days. What a varied state in which I live.

Where you have snow capped mountains a short drive from the surf. Cows lolling about across the street from sea lions (or they could’ve been manatees, I’m really not sure!). Forests lining the highway just a stone’s throw from rocky cliffs.

Taking a detour to Carmel wasn’t a part of The Plan, but isn’t that what spontaneity and serendipity are all about? David and I are happy that we took the road less traveled. Even though it meant we got into L.A. smack in the middle of rush-hour traffic, we didn’t care. The beauty we saw earlier in the day stayed with us through the clogged freeways and smoggy valleys of Los Angeles.

If you ever have a chance to deviate from the plan, do it! You never know what you’ll find and really, isn’t that what makes life exciting?

So tell us, have you ever altered course and found yourself somewhere fabulous? Where’s one place you’ve always wanted to visit, but keep putting off?

The trip gave us a chance to play around with the panorama feature on my phone. It’s goofy, but so fun!

Author: M. Scott. Peck

The journey of life is different for everyone and way each one of us looks at the world and the things around us is distinct. The Road Less Traveled is a book that captures this journey of life like never before. The author M. Scott Peck does a brilliant job as he explains concepts related to the psychology of love, traditional values and spiritual growth in a very explicit and yet subtle way. The book is enriched with fascinating real life examples of people that beautifully connect with the reader and make him feel as if he is reading about his own story.

The book is filled with great insights of how the human mind works, why we behave the way we do and what is it that really helps us to live a life of contentment. The simplicity, with which the author communicates the complex psychological concepts, makes life easier for the average reader. All in all, the book is a real page turner, an excellent narrative and a genuine life changer…

The above article is written by Ramnath Dixit, Trainer Consultant, Renaissance Strategic Consultants. Ram is an avid reader and has been reading up on a lot of books on various practices in management. Keep visiting the website for reviews on various books by Ram.

Stay the course is a term that one would hear from a leader, when one a mission, and is tempted to take an easier road. Scott Peck wrote a famous book, The Road Less Traveled, and Jesus said that there were two roads as well, the wide way and the narrow way. The narrow way is the road, or course, less traveled which is why Jesus said few find it (Matthew 7).

The Apostle Paul seemed to always live his life on a mission. If you recall his life before his conversion, when his name was Saul, his mission was to kill Christians (Acts 9, 22). When Paul was converted Jesus spoke to Ananias saying about Paul, “For I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name’s sake”, Acts 9:16. Although Paul would face suffering on the course that he was on for Jesus, he refused to be deterred. In the above verses, there were some well-meaning believers who tried to persuade Paul not to go up to Jerusalem for fear that Paul would be killed. Paul however would not be persuaded, or taken off course. What kept Paul to stay the course?

1. Paul’s eyes were fixed. Hebrews 12:2 reads, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (NIV) Paul kept his eyes on Jesus and he knew that Jesus would keep His eyes on Paul. If Jesus calls you then He will keep you. Are your eyes fixed on Jesus as you make your daily decisions? What decision are trying to make, and is Jesus’ will even a factor in the process?

2. Paul did not swerve Proverb 4:27, “Do not swerve to the right or the left; keep your foot from evil.” It’s easy to be deterred when your eyes are not fixed on Christ. One doesn’t intend to go off course; usually one slowly drifts away from the course. What causes you to swerve left or right? What are the obstacles? Have you identified your “course – deterrents?” Laziness? Time/business? Wrong or unbalanced priorities? If your lazy, stop; too busy, change it; priorities wrong, alter them. Stop swerving!

3. Paul was ready to die. 1Corinthians 15:31, “I protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily”. Paul was even ready if need be to die for Jesus. Now I don’t want to die, however, Paul died to his selfishness, his agenda, his course, and embraced Jesus’ course for his life. Do you die daily to these things? At the end of Paul’s life he was able to say these words, which we should all hope to be able to say, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith”, 2Timothy 4:7. Will you be able to say that one day, will I? Will you STAY THE COURSE!

Dear Father, guide me to stay the course. Father help me to identify my course-deterrents. Help me to resist the temptations that enter my life, that push me off of Your will and plan for me. Lord, help me slow down and spend more quality time with You. Help me make the moment-by-moment decisions in my life that please You. Lord, forgive me for veering off Your course. I pray all this in Christ’s name, Amen. Blessings Pastor Phil

Related articles

• Don’t Move While Jesus Wants You To Tarry, Pastor Phil Sessa (magnifyhisword.wordpress.com)
• A Picture Worth Living, Pastor Phil Sessa (magnifyhisword.wordpress.com)
• Hinged Upon Emptiness, Pastor Phil Sessa (magnifyhisword.wordpress.com)
• When God Interrupts Your Job, Pastor Phil Sessa (magnifyhisword.wordpress.com)

Tom Asta Backside Noseblunt, Portugal. Fallen Road Less Traveled Documentary coming soon!

Road less traveled

Are your todays the continuing shadows of yesterday and are your tomorrow’s only echoes of someone else’s today?

Is life’s road that you walk upon the one that you want to be on?

If not, then make today ‘the day’! “The first day in the rest of your life.” Most of us have heard this before. But that doesn’t make it any less true. So make it so. It’s a new year. No reason not to head down a new road even if it’s the one less traveled, as long as it’s the road you’ve chosen for yourself.

If I be true

Let it be first to me,

If I be strong

Let it last

e’er so long,

If I be brave

Let it be

while I gave.

With all that I give

Let it be while … I LIVE!

~ Penny L Howe, 2013

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Thanks for the visit, may your day be filled with dreams coming true!

~ Penny

Copyright © 2013 by Penny l Howe

¹⁰ My son, if sinners entice you, don’t be persuaded. ¹¹ If they say—“Come with us! Let’s set an ambush and kill someone. Let’s attack some innocent person just for fun! ¹² Let’s swallow them alive, like Sheol, still healthy as they go down to the Pit. ¹³ We’ll find all kinds of valuable property and fill our houses with plunder. ¹⁴ Throw in your lot with us, and we’ll all share our money”— ¹⁵ my son, don’t travel that road with them or set foot on their path, ¹⁶ because their feet run toward trouble and they hurry to commit murder. ¹⁷ It is foolish to spread a net where any bird can see it, ¹⁸ but they set an ambush to kill themselves; they attack their own lives. ¹⁹ Such are the paths of all who make profit dishonestly; it takes the lives of those who receive it.

Solomon gives us some great advice.  You are going to run across people in your life that want to experiment with life, live on the wild side, etc.  They are going to want to do things that are against God’s way of living.  Sometimes we think it won’t hurt to hang out with them or to do a little wild living with them.  “Here take a drag of some of my marijuana” or “Go ahead take that ring” are some things they might challenge us to do.  They seem like little things and no real big deal.  They won’t hurt anyone.  Yet, it is really like standing at a fork in the road.  We are at a decision point.  Which road do we take?  Do we go on the same road they are on to maintain the friendship or do we head off on God’s road?  Once you head down a road you can’t always turn back as easily as you would like.  One thing leads to another and you become lost or trapped on the road you chose.  Solomon, as the wisest man there was, tells us “my son, don’t travel that road or set foot on their path.”  After all he should know.  He tried everything and saw where it led.  It was all vanity, pride, selfishness and ungodly.  We need to be a rebel and choose God’s road.  The one less traveled.

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

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;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

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.

I.

We begin a new sermon series today with the bold and daring and presumptuous title, “Problem Solved.”  I want to be very quick to say that not any religion has an answer to every individual problem humans may encounter along their life journeys.  Religious literature and religious teachers may have some general comments to make about how to solve problems and so forth, but there is not in the literature of the world’s great religions an answer to every problem that modern people face.

We cannot help calling to mind the criticism that Marx made of Christianity and all religion for that matter:  “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”  Well, in many respects, it has been that. We in the Christian part of the religious world have wanted our religion to be a problem solving one. We many of us have wanted to flip open the Bible to key passages that will explain things to us in black-and-white in no uncertain terms–what we should do in challenging and complicated and compromising situations.

I could go on and on about that, but it is not what today’s time is for. Still I think it’s important to say that as a prelude to this:  namely, whatever problem we find a solution to in the next several weeks is not necessarily a permanent solution or a universal solution to every similar problem that will ever happen for the rest of time. And, oh yes, by speaking of time, aren’t you glad that we all made it passed the Mayan apocalypse? I mean either the Mayans were incorrect or they ran out of calendar space as one Native American suggested to me; or the apocalypse occurred, and this is the aftermath of it. Well, it’s not so bad is it? It seems very much like life before the apocalypse hit.

Please take my disclaimers to heart.  I’m not here to encourage you to use writings, scriptural or not scriptural, or my advice or the advice of anybody who writes from a religious or helping point of view to answer your challenges or the various issues we’re going to be looking at over the next several weeks. I have been a severe critic in many ways of Robert Schuller’s “possibility thinking” approach to life and faith.  He, naturally, was very much influenced by his mentor’s perspective and approach. Norman Vincent Peale, in the same religious tradition as Schuller, preached the power of “positive thinking,” and as I just mentioned Schuller’s adaptation was possibility thinking.

It isn’t a horrible thing and has some, well, possibilities, but it can be horribly shallow and escapist.  One Schuller sermon I encountered in seminary had the title, “Turn Your Scars into Stars.”  Blechk.  That whole approach often encourages people to try to grasp something positive while ignoring the negative. In other words, for example, this approach might encourage somebody to bypass the painful process of grief to get very quickly to the other side where there is some light and relief from the pain while essentially pretending that the grief never was there or never should’ve been there.

That said, if there are resources within holy writ and in religious traditions and in secular helping literature then we should bring all those to bear on helping ourselves and one another cope with this or that challenge life tosses our way. And it is in that spirit that we move ahead with the series by getting on with today’s sermon in particular, which raises the question, “How do you know when you should take the road less traveled?”

II.

To quo or not to quo, that is the question.  When do we follow the crowd, and when must we risk, when must we brave blazing trails alone or with no more than a handful of fellow travelers?  For many of us, except the rebels at heart, it’s typically easier to follow the crowd and, thus, much more complicated and gut-wrenching to make our own way.  Maybe there’s a pathway barely, rarely taken, or maybe no pathway has yet been established but must be.  Which is the most suitable, helpful, healthful way for us to go?

There is no formula for making this determination, but there are a number of items to consider in making these decisions that come around for us frequently.  Deciding which path to take is not a rare situation in which to find ourselves.  It’s a part of life all along the way.

One of the frustrations for progressives and liberals who want to make Jesus in their own image, and that is something that people of all theological stripes within Christendom, from conservative to liberal, tend to try to do, is that Jesus definitely was an apocalyptic-oriented person. He truly believed that God would intervene into human history to bring down evil once and for all and establish a moral, peaceful kingdom eternity. However, the divine intrusion that Jesus and many of his contemporaries anticipated was going to be unpleasant for most, to say the least.

With that in mind I ask you to look with me at a teaching session in which Jesus was talking about choosing the proper pathway in life, and by all means his apocalyptic sensibilities were in the background of what he said.  Still, the clear emphasis is on living in this world in the here and now.

Jesus had just given his teaching on the Golden Rule as Matthew has sewn his collection of Jesus’ sayings and events together.  What could be more earthly and down to earth than a simple to say and hear moral principle that tells us in all our dealings with others, when we are in a position to act of our own volition, we should treat them the way we would want to be treated were we in the position in which they find themselves.  But how challenging and how rare.  Even the Bible thumpers who claim to believe the Bible cover to cover certainly know of this teaching, and many of them–along with many of us out and out ignore it.  Many of them and many of us have no intention of following it either.

Now, again according to how Matthew’s Gospel ordered things, right on the heels of his sermon section on the Golden Rule comes this teaching about which pathway one chooses in life: “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

Jesus said according to my summary or paraphrase there are two ways anybody can go in life. It doesn’t matter what religious commitment you have if any. It doesn’t matter what your cultural connection is. It doesn’t matter what your nationality it. This is a reality across the board, a truly universal teaching from Jesus. There’re two possible ways everybody can go according to Jesus’ perception. One is what he called the broad way; this is the way most people choose.  It is an easy choice, the default option.  It is the way of self-centeredness, power-grubbing, the way where there’s a  willingness to step on others when that furthers our cause. It is a way of living as if the love at the core of the universe, which some of us call God, is not a part of human experience at all. Every person is out for herself or himself.  If this leads to war, fine.  If this leads to poverty for many, fine.  If this leads to the abuse of the earth, fine.  If this calls for lying, fine.  It’s all fine as long as I succeed in furthering me. Selfishness is the name of the game. It’s all about me at home, at work, at church.

But there’s this other way one can choose.  Not many have or will, but it is a distinct option.  Jesus called it the narrow way. He said, again, there are very few who find it as if it is not something that is clear to those who expect possible pathways to just sort of fall open before them.  The narrow way would be the opposite of what I just described as the broad way.  It is other oriented. Ties right in with the Golden Rule, doesn’t it?  The narrow way is a mindful, self-aware pathway.  It is a way of existing and acting that grows out of love at the core of the universe; people on the narrow way makes choices in the power of that love in order to make a positive difference to others, to the habitat, and to self.  Notice that “self” isn’t first on the list.

I can’t help thinking of psychologist Abraham Maslow’s concept of the self-actualized person as an example of someone who finds the narrow way. Jesus found the narrow way.  In modern times we would name Gandi and King and the Dalai Lama as those who were or are on that narrow way.  But it doesn’t have to be a well known, widely influential person. There’re those who find the narrow way very quietly, and no one other than they themselves and the people with whom they come to contact privately know that they are pilgrims, seekers on the narrow way.

Another distinction that we would make between the broad way and the narrow way is that the people on the broad way are headed toward destruction whether they know it or not, and I don’t mean hellfire and damnation; that is, they believe they know exactly what they need to know, all they need to know to get where they want to be.  And they do.  It’s all about them.  What happens, though, when big bunches of self-centered people get together?  The most selfish among them, the most unscrupulous finally destroy the weaker ones.  Remember.  There’s no sharing and little caring on the broad way.

People who are following the narrow way are not sure where they’re headed.  They live life one step at a time.  They are not headed toward what selfishly pleases them.  They are looking out for the well-being of others along the way.  They are open to new information and new meanings and new pulls on their heart strings.  Their destination is absolutely unclear. But it is a way that does not lead to destruction.  You may invest yourself, all of you there is, in the well-being of others, but I don’t think of that as destruction of self.

III.
Abraham, the ancient Hebrew credited with conceiving of monotheism, believed once upon a time that God called him to leave his home, his place of comfort for reasons of practicality and spirituality to find a new place to live, and the storyteller says the oddest thing about Abraham and his clan as they left because they believed God was urging them to leave.  The storyteller said, “They knew not where they were going.”  There’s a positive side to that for seekers.  Seekers on the narrow way have no maps and don’t expect them.  Psychiatrist Scott Peck, author of THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED said, “If we know exactly where we’re going, exactly how to get there, and exactly what we’ll see along the way, we won’t learn anything.”

Today, my task may not be very demanding.  Tomorrow, on the narrow way if I have the grit to travel it, my task may be to take a stand for something highly unpopular, but right, and suffer all manner of criticism and ridicule for my audacity.  The next day on the narrow way, someone or someones may have risks to take in service to humanity; their lives may be in danger.   Think, for example, of aid workers who go into war torn areas while the fighting is still on to try to care for the wounded, the displaced, and the dispossessed.
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;            

Then took the other, as just as fair,    

And having perhaps the better claim,    

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;    

Though as for that the passing there    

Had worn them really about the same,             

And both that morning equally lay    

In leaves no step had trodden black.    

Oh, I kept the first for another day!    

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,    

I doubted if I should ever come back.             

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.  
If I read Frost correctly, in this poem titled THE ROAD NOT TAKEN, not THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED, the road not taken was the likely one, the one most people had chosen–though not by much, the one most travelers to come would choose.  The road his poetic narrator took was the road fewer people had chosen, the one fewer people would choose at that fork in the path in years to come.

Were Frost able to defend his poetic license from the great beyond, he might vehemently deny this, but his poem describes a profoundly spiritual experience, a place along life’s pathway when a serious decision must be made.  In fact, there are several of these right up until we are bidding this world farewell.  Frost lays out memorably for us the reality of the nature of ongoing choices.  Neither of the options in the poem was necessarily or likely a way that would lead to destruction; both options were about the same, but at the fork in the road, one could not go both ways.  Maybe, the next time he came to that fork he would choose the other road, but as many poets and lyricists have reminded us; and as Frost’s narrator knew well, “We may never pass this way again.”

The road less traveled in the teachings of Jesus isn’t potentially the same as the road not taken for the person compelled to live out love in the world, whatever the cost.  Jerry Seinfeld got some big laughs when he quipped, “The road less traveled may be less traveled for a reason.”  I like Seinfeld, and that turn of phrase was funny enough.  Still, when I bring the two road theory into the realm of spirituality and especially when I tie it to Jesus’ teaching about which road to choose, it is a sobering thought and a sobering reality.

There are present and lasting consequences attached to the decisions I make at the forks in life’s roads.  Will I consistently choose the narrow way?  (And, by the way, Jesus’ language here stresses the need to choose regularly, not once and for all.)  Or will I take the easy way out, the mindless option, the crowded roadway?

Always the question in making the decision for those who dare to embrace the ethic of Jesus is this:  Do I live for myself and take the broad way, or do I as a member of the human family live for the well-being of others, not just my own inner circle, and keep risking the narrow way that leads to life at its best–not its easiest but its best?

Well, I dared at the beginning of the sermon today to make this something of a how-to sermon–risky business in a congregation of people who think for themselves.  I’ve given you the basis, though, for making the decision, and I’ve reminded you of Jesus’ warning, if you will, to those who dare to take the narrow way, spiritually speaking the road less traveled.  That warning is:  it is not a popular choice, and it will not be a crowded pathway.  Nor will there be maps; remember that.  At moments, it may well seem that you’re the only one on that road.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, or a in an inner city.  I took the one less traveled by, the one where the hungry and homeless people try to survive and the one where children are taught violence but not from pricy video games.  That decision has made all the difference–for me, for sure; and I hope for some of them as well.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, or at a political dinner where self-centered fat cats with offices on capital hill were happy to take money and connect that money to political promises to better the lives of the upper crusts while ignoring or even diminishing the 48 percent.  I took the one less traveled by, following the likes of St. Francis of Assisi, and say, as did he in his context, “If even my clothing suggests that I approve of what selfish, power-hungry politicians are about, I will strip them off and eventually replace them with Good Will rejects so that my attire may underscore my identification with and care for those whom many of the politicians detest.”  I chose that cold and lonely road, but it has made all the difference.

How do you, how do I, know when to choose the road less traveled?  Easy answer, really.  The answer is:  always.

Amen.

Tommy Sandoval doing a backflip off the sea wall in Cape Town South Africa. Fallen Road Less Traveled tour 2011