ITS UP TO YOU

Last week a lady I had known briefly passed away. She was one of several women I have been privileged to talk to and pray with at the Saginaw Rescue Mission. Somehow she was never able to grab hold of the only power that can truly change our lives. Katherine died of alcohol poisoning. The mood at Monday’s chapel service was very somber as each lady reflected on how her death affected them. One woman mentioned Katherine’s comedic personality and how she enjoyed making others laugh. Another made the statement, “But for the grace of God…” The comment that continues to echo in my mind was made by one who seemed to be affected the most by Katherine’s death. Ameka said, “I keep wondering if there was something I could have said.” Tragic events always have a way of making us think we have the power to change outcomes. In reality we only have the power to change the outcome of our own lives by the choices we make.

Every day we are presented with different choices. The choice we go with can not only affect that day and ourselves but it can affect the rest of our lives and those we love. Sometimes we can make a correction and go in the other direction but most times we continue down the road hoping that the next choice will lead us back to the path God had cleared for us. In the famous poem, The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost writes how time and circumstance stand in the way of ever going back to where you started and making a different choice. He says of the other road:

Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

Life is so short and so precious. We only have a limited time to get it right. Once that time is up, there are no do-overs. Make sure the choice you make and the road you follow is illuminated by the light of God. The road I have journeyed down hasn’t always been easy, free of stones and tangled roots or the most desirable. I’ve held on to God’s unchanging hand as at times I stumbled. Once again, to quote Robert Frost, “And that made all the difference.”
For you who like poetry, here is the poem in its entirety:

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 marked 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.