Steps Along the Way

As I walked this morning, the phrase-the steps of a good man are ordered came across my mind. In fact I’ve read this verse before but I hadn’t read it lately. As I began to ponder that in my mind, I thought about the many situations I didn’t foresee stepping into. Here is not the place in life I thought I’d be walking. At times it seemed like I’ve crept along in the valley of the shadow of death. The shadows and echoes of the enemy threaten to overtake me. You mean even those tiny steps in the darkness were ordered too, Lord?

But what about the steps I took along the paths that I was sure to be the right way but it only led to a dead end? And what about the steps I consciously made away from rather than toward you? Could they have been ordered too?

While I walked up this steep hill, that I usually choose to walk down because it’s easier, I was reminded of the hard places that I have journeyed through. Countless days I was unsure if I could press out another step and other days I was tempted to turn and walk the opposite way. But with the passing of time, I found those small strained steps had taken me to another place. With the change happening so gradually, I had not realized I had moved. The movement was not always physically but my perception, my hope, my faith, my attitude, my thinking moved.

Perhaps if we had to choose, most of us would prefer to walk continually along the smooth path. But despite where you find yourself (even those detours we knowingly take) there is One, who never loses sight of you. If you’re in a dark, dry or hard place just keep walking for the landscape is sure to change. No, I don’t give the false claim that it’ll happen today, tomorrow, or even this month BUT it could. Yet with assurance, I say that if you refuse to stop, you will step onto new terrain.