Many lessons we need to learn over and over again. It didn’t stick the first time or the second. It was true for the Israelites in Old Testament times and for disciples in Jesus’ New Testament time. Still true today for us.

We’ve been given a choice. It’s called free will, in that we get to choose how we live.

There’s a poem by Robert Frost called “The Road Not Taken” where the poet encounters two roads, and he wonders aloud which one to take. (This is not a poetry lesson, in case you didn’t like poetry in school.) Frost writes in the 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…

 

“Mountain Interval marked Frost’s turn to another kind of poem, a brief meditation sparked by an object, person or event.”[1]

We too can meditate on a person, place or event that has an effect on our choices.

While you may not write it in poetry, you can ponder the meaning of a person, place or time that had its greatest effect on your choices. You can just think about, or talk with a friend about it. Or if you’re a writer, you might make journal entries about those choices.

Frost’s poem is a poetic way of sharing the aspect of choice.

We too have choices to make. Do we follow the world with all its challenges, or do we travel a different path, while living in that world? One that invites us to have a relationship with Jesus (John 14:6). I hope you chose the latter. That road can be bumpy too, but staying with it can make the difference.

Frost writes the end of his poem:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

[1] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/robert-frost