Luke 3:4-6,‘Prepare the way for the Lord,make straight paths for him. Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low.The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth. And all mankind will see God’s salvation.’
I didn’t grow up on a farm, but I grew up with a garden. Every spring, when we’d take the rototiller out to prepare the soil, we’d find that rocks had been forced up by the frost and the freezing and thawing. And these rocks, that had previously been buried deep below the soil, were now a problem for our rototiller and for our garden.
Before we could grow our garden in the spring, we’d have to pick the rocks. Now, my mom liked to keep them and use them as edging for the flower beds, but they couldn’t stay in the garden.
In the same manner, the unpaved paths, the ways around the ancient biblical world, would undoubtedly surface rocks in the same way. The path would become uneven, slippery, dangerous, filled with all kinds of hazards.
So, in addition to the regular course correction that keeps us near the heart and will of God, we need a periodic removal of the things that may have surfaced in our lives, things which may cause us to stumble.
What hard things have surfaced in your life this year that need to be removed? Sometimes you’ll stub your toe on these things and they’ll be really clear. But sometimes they’re things we don’t see easily.
The pastor I worked with for nearly 10 years before I came to Evart, he and I would occasionally pick rocks together. He said to me, “Eric, if I came to work with a smudge of grease on my nose, that I couldn’t see, I’d want you to tell me. And if there is some hard of spot of sin that has surfaced in my life, I’d want you to tell me about that too.”
These are things that require searching out. I love what David says in Psalm 139:23 and 24,
Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
What offensive way, what smudge of grease, what stone has surfaced, that needs removed today
to make the path smooth, to prepare the way for the Lord in your life this Christmas?