I’ve decided that I love New Year’s on social media.  For those two days (New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day), most people set aside bickering, political posts, and hot topics to wish everyone a happy 2022 or 2021 or 2023 or whatever the new year is.  Most of them go on to give some sort of blessing to all of their friends.  It’s a time to bless one another with hopes and dreams for a good year.

I love it.  It’s like the world suddenly turns into a blessing generator with no one cursing each other, hating each other, and putting each other down – at least for two days.  It’s fun to scroll through my feeds on various social media and accept each person’s blessing as my own, from simple, “Happy 2022, y’all!” to longer blessings that could almost be prayers.

One of the hot new year blessings this year was an infographic that wished everyone that their “trails be well marked.”  I had to laugh – I’ve been on a few of those trails that aren’t so well-marked.  It’s hard to follow a trail you can’t find.

But then there are trails that are easy enough to follow.  We know where the trail is.  But for whatever reason, we don’t follow it.  Maybe we’re looking for something we know is off of the trail, or maybe we’re just tired of the trail.  Maybe we think we can do better than the trail-makers, so we cut a switchback or take a different route.  Sometimes we just decide to do a variation and walk off of the trail intentionally.

You see, there’s a difference between knowing where the trail is and following it.  We can say, “Oh, I hiked the Vista Trail today,” but what we really mean is that we ended up at the vista by our own route.  We knew where the trail was, so we got there our own way.  That’s not truly hiking the trail, at least in the strict sense of the words.

When God gives us a promise or a glimpse into where He is calling us to go, it can be easy to get to the destination and say, “I followed the Lord where He led me!”  Sometimes we really did do that.  But other times, we knew where the trail was, where the destination was, so we rambled our way on our own route, maybe, not following the actual trail to the place we knew we were going.

That’s not always sinful.  We walk by faith not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7) so at times we may feel like we’re crashing and bushwhacking through the forest more than following a trail.  But God has a trail for every one of us from the point we’re at now to the place where He’s taking us.  We can know where the trail is and how it goes – but if we don’t decide to follow God’s trail, we can take some pretty round-about ways (and sometimes much more difficult ways) to get to the same place.

If we keep our eyes on Jesus, we will always stay on His trail.  It’s when we let our eyes go to the end goal instead of the Reason for the goal that we’re tempted to hop off of the trail and take a “better” way.  God always must be more important than the promise.