Our Path and Guide

I don’t like not knowing where I’m going.

Most of us don’t, I suppose. It can be a dark and dangerous world, and to have guidance is some measure of consolation against the unsurety of the path beneath our feet. But most of the time, that’s not how it works. We don’t know what lies ahead, much less if we will actually make it there.

For nearly a year, I have been musing on the lyrics of a song: “Be my path, be my guide…Jesus.” Our King, who is also a shepherd, is not only our guide in the way, He is the path itself. Our faltering feet are promised a sure footing in Him.

In The Chronicles of Narnia, books that profoundly influenced my childhood, there are many encounters with the great lion, Aslan. In one story, Shasta, a forgotten prince who has been raised in slavery in a distant land, is making his way home, but he doesn’t know it. He has gone through great peril and misery and brushed up against death, only to give his all at the end of his journey in order to warn King Lune of a coming enemy. At the back of a galloping group of knights, his recalcitrant horse breaks away and takes the wrong path. Alone and afraid in the darkness, Shasta becomes aware of a presence pacing beside him, and terror overwhelms him.

He works up the courage to speak into the darkness, and an unsettling conversation ensues with a golden voice. When the mist lifts, Shasta comes to find that not only has Aslan been walking beside him along the brink of a precipice, saving him from a horrible death in the night, he has also brought him over the pass and into Narnia just in time to warn the Narnians of the imminent invasion. He is not a tame lion, but he has acted as a shepherd of sheep, bringing a lost one into safety. In the end, Shasta is reunited with his father and his own kingdom of Archenland, and ushered into his inheritance as the “once and future king.”

To me, it is deeply comforting that even when we cannot see the way, our Lord’s eyes pierce the dark. He guides us through fire and deep mist and the valley of shadow, passing through the very midst of our enemies. Though ten thousand may fall at our right hand, death cannot come near us. When we don’t know where we are going, He does. As Aslan tells Shasta, He tells “no one any story but their own.” He tells us the story of our life, little by little, as it unfolds before us, when He deems we are ready for the next step. There is a bone-deep, settling assurance in that. We can stake our very lives in Him.

In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, another king in exile, Aragorn, leads a group of hobbits and one lone pony through the wilds of the North, bypassing danger and pursuit, to bring them safely to the haven of Rivendell. In this story, Aragorn is both their path and their guide, in a way. They would never have found footing among the bogs and deserted lands of the north without his ranger knowledge of the wilderness. Because they choose to trust him, he is able to bring them past the wraiths, the walking dead, and deliver them into the hands of healers in the Last Homely House east of the sea.

We can trust our guide, as Frodo could trust Aragorn, because He has walked this way before. He is no unsure, inexperienced traveler. He has wandered the wildlands of anguish and sorrow, He has paved the very stones beneath our feet. In the suffering of His soul, in the sacrifice of Himself, He has carved a road forward, and we never have to cut our own path again.

One of my favorite things about the book of Acts is how Christianity is referred to, time and again, as the Way. When you have tasted and seen, over and over, that Jesus is good and knows where He is going, He is no longer one option among many others – you realize that He is the only way you could ever possibly take. Other paths may seem broad and beautiful, leading to pleasure for a season, but they don’t lead to green pastures and everlasting life, to every beautiful thing coming true, to finding “the place where all the beauty came from.” They don’t bring us to Narnia. They don’t lead to Heaven. It is the path of Jesus alone, walking hand in hand with Him, that brings us home.

Then in fellowship sweet we will sit at His feet
Or we’ll walk by His side in the way
What He says we will do, where He sends we will go
Never fear, only trust and obey