The Needed Security of a Well Designed Safe Path

I love walking through the redwood forests on the Pacific Coast. I breathe deeper, walk slower, and try to notice everything. These forests are full of life and clean air, and when I’m there, I want to soak it all in.

When walking these magnificent paths, I often don’t know what I’ll see around the next bend, especially if it’s an unfamiliar trail. It’s the proverbial, you can’t see the forest for the trees. It’s hard to see the big picture walking among those giant sequoias.

One can only see a clear definition of trees and plants a few feet ahead. The farther you try to look, the more the trees blend together in a mass of green and brown.

And without a well-worn path, it would be easy to get lost because everything tends to look the same.

I walked this path trusting that it would take me to my desired end point: the place where I began.  The agencies that blaze these trails design them in a giant loop.

As a photographer, I look for the right place where the shadows don’t overpower the light. Just a few feet off this trail pointing in a different direction, the dense canopy, the grouping of trees, and the ground foliage was steeped in shadows causing me to increase my camera settings to be more sensitive to light.

In photography (as in life), light is everything! Without it, the picture would be nothing but darkness.

So much of our personal path in life is unforeseen. As much as we would like to know what’s around the corner, this life is a time for us to learn to walk by faith.

By facing the light and increasing our sensitivity to it, we will have greater ability to see things clearly and not be engulfed in darkness, no matter where or how the trail twists and turns.

Staying on the clearly defined path will keep us from getting lost and end up in a place that we had no intention of ever going to. 

As we trust The Master Designer while we travel unfamiliar paths in life, we will have confidence that they will ultimately take us to where we began:

Into the arms of that God who gave us life.