Last evening I was driving down a snow-covered country road that hadn’t been plowed. The setting sun a magnificent display of beautiful pinks and yellows on my left and the edges of the tire tracks ahead highlighted by the setting sun. Sometimes it seems that the road less traveled by is an uneven, uphill, tangled web of vines that has to be hacked by machete the entire way. During those times, it is pretty easy to get tired of the journey and wonder if it’s even worth it.
In Matthew 7, Jesus talks about how there’s one road that most people take that’s wide and easy. The gate to life, he says, is narrow and the road is hard. Few find it. I think the road less traveled by is a little like the narrow way that few find. And when I chose to follow that road, as Frost said, “[it] has made all the difference.” Although the narrow road is often hard, there are those moments when the truck is in 4wd and you are following a set of tracks in the snow, lit up by the setting sun, and you think, “Wow… few have driven this road and few have had the opportunity to experience this beauty.”
I just saw a story about these folks who climbed up this high mountain in China for something unexpected. The steps were steep and took them incredibly high. At the top there was a little village. They took the path and got on a cable car that took them across a deep valley to another peak. From there it was a short path and then the plank road. The plank road is a series of wood planks secured to the side of a rock face by pins and chains and is only about a 1-2′ wide. You hang on to chains hammered into the sides of the mountain. It is a sheer drop down thousands of feet. At some points the planks are not there and it only holes cut into the rock. When you finally make it to the top, there are some more stairs and then a beautiful Chinese TeaHouse at the peak.
I often look at photographer’s websites and Facebooks and marvel at some of the places they have experienced and know that it is often because they choose the less traveled road — the forgotten, overgrown lane that leads to a breathtaking vista or climbing a rocky trail and finding that secluded mountain lake, untouched by the frenzy of the world — and that makes all the difference.
“But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.” — Matthew 7:14