The Road Not Taken

How many times in life have you looked back upon a choice that you’ve made and wonder what your life would be like if you had gone down a different path? Maybe it’s a relationship that didn’t work out, a job that you didn’t get, a friendship that ended badly, or that house you bought that turned out to be a money pit. In the modern world we have far more real choices than our ancestors were faced with. Prior to the last few generations most people had no choice in their occupation (nearly all were farmers anyway), didn’t have any say in their spouse (parents made those decisions, the future couple typically had no prior relationship), and rarely moved more than a few miles from where they were born.


As a Christian, new dimensions open up revolving around moral choices, successes and failures, that may haunt us as we strive to be Christ-like. David, the one-time slayer of Goliath and God’s “man after his own heart” (I Samuel 13:14), lived to have such regrets despite his stellar service for God. David chose to commit adultery with Bathsheba, a sin which led him directly to plot the death of her husband Uriah. (II Samuel 11-12) Those choices didn’t keep God from using David after his repentance, but what might have been if this amazing man of God had stayed true to his faith? One of the prayers that I regularly make is that God would use me to do amazing things for his kingdom. In that same light, one of the strongest checks I have on the temptations I face is the knowledge that sin will keep me from making the most of that hope.

It may be interesting to wonder where we would be now if that big promotion had happened, or that first love had lasted, but the true question that will matter in eternity is, “What might I have been able to do for God if I hadn’t…” The Road Not Taken may have been a better one, but the sin not committed will always be the right road.