The dream – building empires, and bequeathing legacies, did not become a reality through the wide road of shortcuts. It is one founded on the long trail of perseverance, hard work, consistency, and patience. Without this trail, the trajectory of the journey remains undeveloped, and when the journey is without form, the value of the spoils are diminished and wasted.
To know what we have, and truly appreciate it, we must go through the full odyssey. When God wanted the Israelites to know and appreciate His rescue of them, He did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter and easier (Exodus 13:17). But rather, He led them on a longer and more arduous route, around by the desert road toward the Red Sea (Exodus 13:18). To fully recognise where we are and how we got here, we must first understand the trajectory of the journey. We only settle for the bondage of the past when we fail to comprehend the cost of our freedom today. The shortest road is often permeated with traps designed to make our past experiences more attractive than the journey ahead. All the while, notwithstanding, the journey behind us is marked with graves, including one bearing our name upon it.
When the battle is long, and the road back short, the temptation to retreat and settle in the illusions of yesterday is great. If God had not caused the Israelites to travel the long road, the Israelites would have retreated to their comfort zone at the first sign of trouble. Some theologians estimate that the Israelites had only been travelling for about thirty-eight days, covering a distance of approximately 160km, when they were confronted with adversity and cried for their illusions of the past saying, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!” (Exodus 14:11–12). Additionally, in Exodus 16:3 they grumbled, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”
Isn’t it remarkable, when faced with temporary setbacks, how the narrative is often idealised to a time that never existed? Such as the Israelites did when recalling a delusional time when they “sat around pots of meat and ate all the food they wanted!” The true narrative was one of a people that were worked ruthlessly, under harsh and bitter labour, to the point that they groaned in their slavery and cried out for help! (Exodus 1:13–14 and 2:23). Just as with the Israelites, God does not want us to retreat into a fabricated narrative, residing in the bondage of the past. It is for this reason that God took the Israelites through the long road, knowing that they would want to change their minds and seek to return to Egypt to die as slaves (Exodus 13:18). With God, there is always a reason for the road He sets us to journey upon.
Sometimes we are taken on the long road to purge bad habits and discard our unnecessary and excess luggage. We see this with the Israelites, who could not move forward until they were “circumcised, purified and without the cynics” (Joshua 5:2–6). The long road is designed to cleanse us of that which will hinder our success in the future. The apothegm says that the best things in life are worth fighting for. And so it is that the longest road will always be worth the journey, for it will uncover wonders and mysteries which those on the short road will never encounter. In times when the follower looks for shortcuts from the discomforts of growth, and which promise a quick exit, the leader will always look for the long road; to explore treasures, find new mysteries, and collect spoils on the peregrination to the mountaintop.
The shortcut will always be wide and glutted with underachievers, nondreamers and limited mentality thinkers. But the narrow and long road, with an imperceptible number of people, will always command the audacious and atomic; those ready for battle, armed with a defiance to be different, and scented with greatness. The Book of Matthew 7:13 warns against looking for shortcuts in life and says, “Enter through the narrow gate for wide is the gate and broad the way leading to destruction, and many are those entering through it.”
The true secret to success is this: faith in God combined with a brew of perseverance, hard work, consistency, patience, the ability to be different and to travel the distance, even when almost everyone else around quits or condems the road we have chosen.
©Katie Mliswa and MomentsbyKatie.M, 2018.
