“Let your eyes look straight ahead; fix your gaze directly before you. Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways. Do not turn to the right or the left; keep your foot from evil.” Proverbs 4:25-27
Have you ever tried taking a photo with a camera that had settings slightly off? It is amazing how much of a difference that can make. From the focus to the exposure to simply the timing of the photo, all of these things can alter the outcoming of a photo. Your photo can go from being the best scenery ever to a blur of colors with the slightest difference of settings. And sometimes it’s hard to see until you get to the very end and you either print the photo or view it on a larger screen. Or in otherwards, you only realize when it’s too late. You may realize it when you are no longer at the spot you took the photo, or the lighting got worse, or your camera loses its battery. So many options but all leading to the same point: you saw one thing but due to a slight mishap you received another.
But isn’t the same true with our lives. Sometimes we fail to pay attention to the slight ways we stray, sometimes with a blind eye towards where it may lead. “Well this shouldn’t be too harmful right?” “It’s not like I'm doing something worse” “I don’t think this will be a problem”. Sometimes we make excuses trying to validate the slight alterations to the left or the right, with this setting or that setting, and we do so with little regard to where it may lead. A blurry photo. A blurry picture of what our lives is about due to the differences we made from the things we are actually called to focus on.
Another way to picture this is a hiking trail. Imagine the beauty of the nature around you. You see the trees flowing, hear the birds chirping, and the wind blowing. But as you look at the trail ahead of you, how narrow might it be. And you look to the left and there’s a steep hill down and to your right is a steep hill up. If we allow ourselves to stray from the path, we begin to find difficulties because of what is to the left and right. And similar to the photos, sometimes we may not realize it until it’s too late.
When we think about our lives, a very basic question we can ask ourselves is this: where is my focus? Am I focused on Christ? Am I focused on keeping my life on the path that He’s placed in front of me? Or am I altering things? Is my life a little blurry because I’m straying one way or another? May our eyes be fixed straight ahead towards the path that God has made. And rather than turning left or right, facing Him and following the only One worthy to follow.
