Forgotten Highways (Jer. 6, 12, 17, 18; Ecc. 1:9)

I always loved Robert Frost’s poetry, and I’d dare say many if not most Americans are familiar with his poem “The Road Not Taken,” as it is often taught in both middle and upper school curriculums. Possibly it is the imagery that sticks with us, and some might even envision themselves forging off into a path not already trodden down or beaten by the footsteps of life, even though Frost in his poem says that the two paths are equally worn. I commented to my husband the other day while riding in the woods that I wanted to come back when there was some fall foliage and take a picture at the place where the two roads divided because it made me think of the poem. It just sticks with you. It's evocative.

The thing is, the more times I taught the poem and the older I got, especially knowing what I now know of Frost from researching and then teaching his background before reading his works, the more I doubt what I thought I used to know about the poem. 

Reading poetry is not like reading God’s word. 

Poets write with the understanding that people bring with them to the reading of poems their own translations. What I mean is this: although  American’s have much in common and can read and see the same words, everyone’s background is unique, causing the way we interpret a poem to differ. We bring who we are and overlay this upon the structure and meaning of a poem. I fear we have done so with this poem in particular, and reading in Jeremiah this past week has made me think of this. God's word is ultimate truth, and as a reader, I can only adapt to His viewpoint, not invent my own or overlay my circumstances or past onto it and get what I want out of the text. 

The call God gave Jeremiah to give to His people was to walk a different path (the one set by Him for their fathers), actually it was a call to get off their own pathways and the pathways of their neighbors that were causing them to stumble and to get back onto the true highway (Jer. 18:15).

 Frost’s lifetime war within himself for the search for truth about who God was and what he believed about God are not hidden if one digs into his history. It is all over the map! His parents differed wildly in their approaches to faith—His mother was into all things spiritually mystical and his father did not see the need for God nor did he profess to believe in Him. Frost was not silent about his beliefs and his search, and although he writes in his speaker’s voice in this poem something that sounds very similar to Jeremiah 6:16 about people who “stood at the crossroads and look[ed],” and while Frost might have spent his life seeking the good way to walk in, looking at paths old and already trod down by those gone before him, he did not seem to ever find the peace and rest that comes from choosing to walk in God’s way. Rather, he seemed to choose his own path, some conglomeration of individualism and spiritism and worldliness that spoke of being exposed to the truth but inventing his own way, much like the people Jeremiah wrote to in his book, and much like our world today. 

Frost's speaker wanted to travel down both roads. Look at this first stanza of his poem:

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;

Like the speaker in the poem, we humans often find ourselves at places of divergence and stand and look as far as humanly possibly, weighing not only the options but also the consequences. Maybe there is a true desire for a lifetime spent walking with God, but the real struggle comes when the flesh wants the the things of the world, like Jeremiah’s readers. This pull of the flesh to what we desire, to the easy way, is an epic battle that God has seen played out time and again, as there is nothing new under the sun (Ecc. 1:9). He alone sees the innermost beings, knows the struggles, and tests the hearts (Jer. 12:3). When life gets hard because we’ve wandered from Him in our sin (and we are definitely prone to do so) and now feel hopeless ("What have I done?!"); when we’ve chosen the siren path of least resistance ("Ooooh, that looks good!") and walked “according to our own plans” (instead of asking for His will and waiting for clarity) and obeyed “the dictates” of our own evil hearts (Jer. 18:12), God doesn’t allow us to continue freely walking down any path of our choice IF we are his children. Instead He lovingly and compassionately disciplines us like He disciplined the children of Israel (in ways that sometimes seem terribly harsh to those who don’t understand His character and man’s depravity), urging us to choose Him so that He may forgive us (Jer. 36:3), wooing us to get back on the path He has called us to walk regardless of the difficult it entails.

Sometimes we humans stand and look down the path of Christianity unable to see past the bend, beyond the cost to eternity (and Jesus makes it clear there is cost—read Jesus' words in Luke and the writers' in the New Testament), and often people choose the easier path as Frost’s speaker does:

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,

The way that calls to Frost’s speaker is fair and grassy and “wanted wear.” The path the speaker of the poem chooses not to take is unclear because of the bend in the undergrowth—maybe it looked difficult and grown up and daunting. I know from walking through the woods that getting through undergrowth (even in a path already cut but overgrown with disuse) can be difficult and painful; in the woods I always choose the path of least resistance and lush green grass would be a draw for sure over the thorny way of a thorny, overgrown path. I know from walking through this life spiritually that getting through the tangled problems of this world God’s way can be both difficult and painful, but the rewards are beyond compare and bring joy, not despair!

In his life, Frost never seemed to find peace, and the words of his speaker in the last two stanzas of this poem seem to reflect his understanding that he might be choosing the wrong path:

And both that morning equally lay 

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept 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.

We look and see two equally good roads, or at least I know I have always wanted to see two equally good ones. Yet is that the reality if the speaker understands he will probably wish himself on a different road? I always saw the speaker's choice as a good one, and it's natural to look back and wonder what would've been. It is hard to go back. Actually, we can’t go back, and can only go forward, but how we go depends on Whom we are trusting. Are we trusting in our own strength or the strength of man? Because if we are, our heart has departed from the Lord (Jer. 17:5) and we’ve become unable to see the truth of the parched desert places in which we now dwell. In this light, the choice could be terribly awful if the speaker looks back someday from hell and sees that the divergence, the path he took, was the wrong one that led him there. If, however, we choose to trust in God and place our trust firmly in Him, we will thrive, put down roots, and know no fear when hard times coming because it is His strength (not our own) we trust. We will also “never cease from yielding fruit” (Jer. 17:8). I honestly hope that is the path the speaker went down. I hope it is the path that Frost ended up on before the close of his life. Only he and God truly know.

Lord, let my life be completely yours and the highway I walk down be the one lighted by your Word. Let my desperately wicked, deceitful heart that I cannot even begin to understand (even though it is mine) deceive me. Search my heart; test my mind; help me choose the right path when I stand at a place where two paths diverge. Let me clearly hear your Spirit within me and continue to strive to know more of you so that I can recognize your guidance. Let me always trust in You to save me instead of trying to forge my own way and trust in my own strength.

Amen.