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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Personal Problems (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 48. A Guide over Life's Trail.
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A Guide over Life's Trail.
Nobody thinks of climbing the dangerous passes and peaks of Switzerland without a guide. The experienced travelers are very careful about getting experienced guides. Even then a man sometimes loses his life. These guides have to learn the way at the risk of their own lives, and they take serious risks every time they climb. And this is the sphere where a man can see and feel with his outer material senses.
How much more does a man need a guide for the climb on into the future days, where no man has yet learned how to see or feel an inch ahead. With all our great advances in knowledge and science, we don't know surely a clock's tick ahead what is coming. The coming year, and month, and day,—even the next moment is utterly hidden from our eyes. We are in Egyptian darkness that may be felt, and that is felt, about to-morrow. We are used to it from the earliest birth of life, and move on with a certain steadiness, planning, and shrewdly guessing how certain matters will go.
That very steadiness of step in our common life, on into the unlit darkness of the next hour, tells of a great Guide whose hand upon life all men have learned unconsciously to trust. But the factor of fear is never absent from human life, though it lessens steadily as one conies to know his Guide. The man who risks going alone in a dangerous mountain climb in daylight is reckoned foolhardy. Even he wouldn't go in the dark night. How much worse is it to go alone on the life-climb without even a single ray of daylight to show the way. Yet many do just that. Foolhardy—would you say?
There is a tender awe in knowing that there is some One at your side guiding at every step, restraining here, leading on there. He knows the way better than the oldest Swiss guide knows the mountain trail. He has love's concern that all shall go well with you. There is great peace for us in that, and with it a tender awe to think who He is, and that He is close up by your side. When you come to the splitting of the road into two, with a third path forking off from the others, there is peace in just holding steady and very quiet while you put out your hand and say, "Jesus, Master, guide here." And then to hear a Voice so soft that only in great quiet is it heard, softer than faintest breath on your cheek, or slightest touch on your arm, telling the way in fewest words or syllables—that makes the peace unspeakable.
And if the road lead you into a thick, dark woods, and strange shadowy forms seem to threaten from behind the trees, you go quietly on singing a bit of a song, because He led you there, and is leading. That path may lead into some commonplace Nazareth village, into some wilderness with untamed beasts, or into some thick Gethsemane grove of gnarly olives, or even up a Calvary hill outside a city wall, but you go steadily on with the path, and the song, and a joy full of glory, for the Master led you there, and has not gone away.
And if perhaps the chosen road lead to crowds and great service and praise of men, you will be thinking it was His leading that brought you there, not your own wisdom or talent. He has some great purpose for these crowds, and may be some purpose through these crowds farther on. And you will be very careful not to disappoint or mar His plans. And, too, you will keep very quiet and close that the dust the crowd is raising may not bother your eyes and dim the vision of His face.
And if sometimes the way be lonely and long, and the brambly thorn bushes on the sides scratch face and hands, and sharp stones cut your feet, you can, if you will be quiet enough, find a new softness to the strong arm of the Guide around you, and a new fragrance in His presence beside you; and that will make you grateful for the roughness of the road, because it draws out more the fineness of His love, and of Himself.