The straight path

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight (Proverbs 3:6).

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. That’s what they taught you in school, right? But the matter isn’t all that simple.

Suppose you are driving through unfamiliar countryside. You want to know how far it is to the next town. A friendly local might tell you "it’s 20 miles as the crow flies." But if you ask another person the same question, she might answer "it’s about a 40 minute drive." Is someone yanking your chain? Not at all. If you could fly in a straight line, the distance is 20 miles; but if you are driving around hills and through construction, the actual route will take 40 minutes of travel. In this situation, a straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.

Or consider this. When you plot the path of a ship or airplane as it crosses the ocean, you don’t get a straight line—you get a curve. This is because the earth is round. Even though it seems as if you are traveling in a straight line, you really aren’t—your path follows the curvature of the earth.

It is easy to believe that we are on the straight and narrow. From our perspective, we’re doing everything right. But appearances can be deceiving. We don’t have the perspective of a flying sparrow; we don’t see that the path we are taking meanders all over the place and eventually terminates in a dead end. We think that our life is on course; we don’t have a high enough view to realize that the earth is curved and forces us to curve with it.

Only God has the perspective to see things as they truly are. Only He can see the straight path that leads to heaven. Sin puts up obstacles that get in our way. The world tries to influence the direction of our lives. A lot of the time, we don’t even realize how badly we are out of line. So God sent His Son to make our way straight. He revealed the way to everlasting happiness—it is a route that goes directly through Him. He suffered and died to clear the road for us; Jesus drives the pilot car that takes us safely past every obstacle and danger. In a world of crookedness, Jesus provides the straight truth.