The Maze of Life

You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with your joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand (Psalm 16:11, NIV).

Fall has officially arrived. That means football, bonfires, pumpkin patches, and one of my favorite things as a kid, corn mazes. We have several epic farms in Kentucky that create phenomenal corn mazes every year, and it’s always something I’ve enjoyed doing with friends.

Kind of crazy that we’d choose to walk into a field knowing it’s likely we’ll get lost, make wrong turns, wind up at dead ends, and backtrack numerous times before making it to the end.

I realized recently that life is often a whole lot like trying to navigate a corn maze. We know where we want to end up, but we are required to step into situations where it’s impossible to know every right move to make as we navigate the turns of life.

Let’s go left here. But then you end up at a dead end. Take a right here. Then you end up in an endless loop, getting you nowhere. Let’s try this way, but maybe this time we’ll take a right after the first left.

If you’ve ever been in a corn maze you know what I mean. It is confusing, and you feel like you’re never going to make it out. That’s all fun and games, but it feels a little different when it’s the game of life that’s got you feeling like you’re stuck in a cycle of wrong turns.

Should I send my child to a private school? How will I know if this guy is the one God has for me? Should I change jobs even if it requires my family to move to a new city?

Questions aren’t often accompanied by answers that immediately get us to the desired outcome. That’s not how life, or corn mazes, work. The key to making it to the end is walking the path, and making one decision at a time, knowing you’re pretty much guaranteed to make a wrong turn somewhere along the way.

Life is the same way. It’s impossible to know what step five is going to look like until we take step one, step two, and so on. It’s about leaning into the Lord in prayer, and doing the next right thing. And if we find ourselves too focused on the desired outcome, we miss what God may want to teach us in the current moment and season we find ourselves in.

If stepping into a corn maze was just about getting to the end as quickly as possible, there wouldn’t be much fun in that. And honestly, I think we’d all be better off to look at life that way, too. If we get too focused on reaching the desired outcome we may miss Jesus along the way.

Let us lean into the truth found in Psalm 16:11, which says: “You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with your joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.” Life is like a corn maze, but when we say yes to a relationship with Jesus, and walk through it with Him, we are guaranteed to reach the end, which is in His eternal presence in heaven.

#christ #thenarrowpath #faith #fall #obedience #psalm #discipline #jesus