December 4

Tiring zigzagging

“This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before” (Phil. 3:13).
“Ye shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left. Ye shall walk in all the ways which the Lord your God hath commanded you, that ye may live, and that it may be well with you, and that ye may prolong your days in the land which ye shall possess” (Deut. 5:32-33).

The old farmer unconsciously taught a great truth when he told about his dog, which had just returned with the carriage from a little drive and seemed thoroughly exhausted as he lay down on the grass panting for breath: “’Taint the road that tired him,” said the farmer, “but the zigzagging. The team has only gone about ten miles, but he’s run more than fifty. There wasn’t a gate open on the way but he had to go in and examine the whole premises. There wasn’t a cat appeared, but he had to chase it. There wasn’t a dog barked but he just wore himself out barking back again and showing fight, so that while we were keeping on the road he was running over the whole country. No,” he concluded, “’taint the straight traveling, but the zigzagging that tires him.”

How true the old farmer’s words are about many of our spiritual walks. The real tasks and trials of life are not too hard to bear, but the roundabouts that we make for ourselves, the cares we imagine, the needless waste of life and energy in things we have no need to say or do, this is where the wear and the worry come. Most of us are like the old lady who said she had had many trials in life, especially those that never came. Beloved, God is able to keep you from stumbling, to lead you in a straight path and to save you from “zigzagging.”

Behind my back I fling,
Like an unwanted thing,
My former self and ways,
And reaching forward far,
I seek the things that are
Beyond time’s lagging days.

Oh! may I follow still,
Faith’s pilgrimage fulfill,
With steps both sure and fleet;
The longed-for good I see,
Jesus waits there for me,
Haste! haste! my weary feet.
—A. N. Groves.

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