Your thoughts?
A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.
Prov 17:17 New International Version
Ready…set…GO! The rest of his life began.
The journey had been planned, the foundation had been laid and he had no other choice but to take his first step. How painful, how unfair! With each step he took his eyes lowered and his spirit broke and the engulfing sadness that beat down on him seemed to rake though his heart and sift away all the hope and happiness and future plans, leaving him cleaving and grasping for some semblance of reality and truth. Disoriented he looks up not knowing if it is down and takes a left not knowing it is right. He is dizzy and growing increasingly tired. He just started this course and he wonders how much longer it will last. Step by step he stumbles and falls not knowing if he is heading back in the same direction from which he started. Even when he reaches a familiar landmark it is different, nothing is the same…it is completely different. Crossroad after crossroad he makes dizzy decisions trying to make sense of the course that has been given him, he becomes desperate in his mind “where do I go, I know longer know”. He questions the course and attempts to plan his own, but in this futile effort becomes more dissatisfied with the new path. He becomes tired of all paths and once again looks on the map that was given at the beginning of the journey. He reads through it thinking “maybe I missed something maybe I read it wrong”. He contemplates it directions and aggressively seeks out the truth in direction. He longs to find a path that is different than the one that is screaming out on the page. He wants to ignore it, he wants his course to be different but whatever his decisions and whichever direction he takes does not take him further from the journey. It seems to taunt him and in some ways mock him for even attempting to change who he is being made into. He tries to think clearly and references logic and intellect and uses them to mark the x’s on the page of the ways that have not worked. He has marked so many that he is starting to wonder if he even has a path any more. As the paths dead end and sidewalks crumble under his feet he is pushed back to the same path he has been taking and on the same journey that was set. He is forced back to the same beaten path and as he looks back he can see all the now fossilized footprints that were once his and he looks once again at the map. He takes a deep breath and his lungs fill with life….hope, direction and clarity come with subtlety for the map he holds is not at all about the journey but all about the one who mapped it out, the trail blazer, the author, the map maker. The coordinates were set before the journey began, and as the rest of this young mans life unfolds he came to realize that the trails and detours that he took were exactly the paths the mapmaker had intended him to travel. And through all of the twisting, turning and muttled, muddy rock laden paths a simple truth becomes ever so clear. This young man is to love at all times and through this he is a brother born for adversity.
