“I will make the blind walk a path they don’t know and I will guide them in paths they don’t know. But I will make darkness before them into light and rough places into level ground. These things I will do; I won’t abandon them.” Isaiah 42:16 (CEB)
I’ve been thinking about paths lately, as I watch the landscapers prepare a new walkway for our property. As usual, I am impatient to see the finished work. But there is so much that has to be done first – days of digging out, laying down a gravel base, compacting between layers, leveling and making smooth before the first stones could be laid down. If those preparations are skipped, a poor foundation will be laid for this path. It may look really beautiful, but the integrity of the work will be evident as time goes on.
So I am thankful for the expertise of these men at Second Nature landscape design, for their patience and skill. And it strikes me that, all over Scripture, God promises to make good paths for us to walk on. Sometimes I get so frustrated when there seems to be no clear direction when I want to forge ahead now. When I fret, I forget that God is always at work in my life preparing the way ahead in the design he’s planned – paths of integrity that take time and much unglamorous labour to complete. This foundational work may be in my heart so that the way becomes clear, or it may be work shaping outside circumstances to prepare the way. But it, too, is necessary for the transforming of my old nature into a second nature, making rough places plain, making that which is unlovely in my life beautiful to Him.
Reading the verse from Isaiah, I couldn’t help but think of Crystal Gunn who is visually impaired and the group from the Lighthouse who did the Edgewalk at the CN Tower.
Reading your blog through I also connect with laying foundations for paths as I was involved doing this last summer – and how the last stage of laying the bricks, is the easy part after all the preparations.
Then re-reading the verse, I know how much this applies to me as well.