Paths & Roads

DAILY BYTE

Today, in continuing the thought begun yesterday, I’ll be leaning on the reflections of two other writers I’ve already made reference to this week.

First, a short anecdote from Tom Smith. He writes:
“At least once a year I take a group of men into the wilderness spaces of South Africa - mostly the Drakensberg. It is always a fascinating experience. When we leave Johannesburg, we leave the city by way of the highway called the N3. As we travel on it the highway makes way for country roads. Country roads make way for dirt roads. When we start our hike, these dirt roads that vehicles can use make way for roads that are only fit for off-road vehicles. These then make way for roads that can only be accessed by foot and then when we get into the deep alpine wilderness, the path disappears all together.

When we leave the city it always strikes me how the conversations and attention level of the group is affected by the medium we use to travel. In the vehicle on the highway the chatter is usually incessant. As we transition onto the smaller roads and open the windows, it is as if we emerge out of a city hibernation and start to notice again. Once we’re in the wilderness our verbosity comes to a screeching halt, for it is mostly inadequate to describe the grandeur and magnificence of what is around us.”

Secondly, I’d like to share this insightful piece by Wendell Berry, as he reflects on the difference between a path and a road.

“The difference between a path and a road is not only the obvious one. A path is little more than a habit that comes with knowledge of a place. It is a sort of ritual familiarity. As a form, it is a form of contact with a known landscape. It is not destructive. It is the perfect adaptation, through experience and familiarity, of movement to place; it obeys the natural contours; such obstacles as it meets it goes around.

A road, on the other hand, even the most primitive road, embodies a resistance against the landscape. Its reason is not simply the necessity for movement, but haste. Its wish is to avoid contact with the landscape; it seeks so far as possible to go over the country, rather than through it; its aspiration, as we see clearly in the example of our modern freeways, is to be a bridge; its tendency is to translate place into space in order to traverse it with the least effort. It is destructive, seeking to remove or destroy all obstacles in its way. The primitive road advanced by the destruction of the forest; modern roads advance by the destruction of topography….

I only want to observe that [the road] bears no relation whatever to the country it passes through. It was built, not according to the lay of the land, but according to a blueprint. Such homes and farmlands and woodlands as happened to be in its way are now buried under it…. Its form is the form of speed, dissatisfaction, and anxiety. It represents the ultimate in engineering sophistication, but the crudest possible valuation of life in this world.”

In the light of these reflections we could say that the way of Jesus is much more like a path than a road. Which means that it’s a journey that isn’t focused on speed, comfort and convenience – as if its only objective were to get us to some destination (heaven perhaps?) as quickly as possible. Rather, the journey that Jesus calls us to is long and winding and sometimes tough going. It’s a journey that recognizes the varying contours of this life, with all its ups and downs, and is resolutely committed to going wherever life’s path may take us, confident that this is where God can be found.

PRAY AS YOU GO

Thank you Lord that while the way of Jesus is not always easy, comfortable or convenient, it is always good. Thank you that I do not have to follow this path alone, but that in Jesus I have a friend, a traveling companion and a guide. Amen

SCRIPTURE READING

John 14:6

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”