Trail Tales

The small town where I currently reside has amazing scenery. On one side you see a beautiful canyon, on the other, a blue lake surrounded by red rock. What's even better is the dirt trail on the outskirts of town. This is where I love to wander and take in the beauty of the surrounding area. The whole trail is 13 miles long, and I usually only do a part at a time. Just down the road from where I live, I can get on the trail by either going left or right. To the left is what I prefer to bike. The path is well used and there's not a lot of sand piles to ride through. To the right, is what I usually end up running on. There's lots of sand, which makes it harder to bike. However, I consider it the most beautiful part of the trail because of its background, the lake.
Recently, as I've wandered over these paths, my mind has focused on the actual trail. I had a feeling that there was something profound I could learn from the red dirt.
As I took my bike over some very sandy spots, I struggled to pedaled forward and laughed as my wheels turned back and forth. Sand is very tricky like that, trying to get you off-balance and turned around. I thought, "This relates to life, you've got to know where you're going so something like sand doesn't keep you from getting to your goals." That was a life analogy, but I felt like the trail had something more personal to teach me. Something that I needed to apply to my life.
Less than a week later, I was back out on the trail, the part overlooking the lake. I noticed several paths coming and going and decided I would explore them to see where they led. I wanted to see if any of these trails were better for biking. As I wandered, I soon realized that most of them led to pretty much the same direction. Each of the paths had loose sand, so the sand would be unavoidable. It really didn't matter which trail I took. In each, I would have the sandy parts to travel through. But as long as I was pointed in the right direction, I would reach my destination.
Sometimes in life, I get so focused on what path I'm supposed to take. I think that there's only one path for me and I have to figure out what that is. But that's not really how it works. If we know our ultimate destination, then there could be several paths that lead us to that destination. For example, when I felt like it was time to leave St. George, I prayed and pondered to know where the Lord needed me next. And now, sometimes I wonder where the Lord will need me next year.
The Lord can find work that He needs me to do wherever I chose to live. He can make use of us in whatever career we choose, whatever college we go to, who we choose to date and eventually marry, or town we choose to live in. Sometimes those seem like big decisions to us, but there's not only ONE right path. As long as we're searching for inspiration, making sure we haven't taken a wrong path. Any of those paths will work. That doesn't mean they won't be without trails and sandy places, but we just have to keep going forward, keeping our ultimate goals in mind.