Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go;  God’s the one who will keep you on track.

Proverbs 3:6

All too often we follow the path that others have set for our lives. As we grow up, our peers tell us how we should dress and how we should act. Our parents tell us where we should go to college and what our major should be. Our employers tell us what our career path should be, and on goes the list of paths others set us on. For too many people, life is about following other people’s paths, not our own.

Against this, I think of the birth of Jesus. We can become so used to hearing the story we easily forget just how surprising it is. An unmarried couple had a baby in a barn, and those who would come to follow this child would go to unexpected places and do miraculous things. In other words, they got off the path everyone else had put them on, and they followed God. One thing is clear: when you follow God, you are guaranteed a spiritual adventure in which you’ll discover how to live more fully into who God created you to be.

I think Ralph Waldo Emerson captured this well when he said, “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” My prayer for us all is that as we encounter God through the birth of Jesus, we will be open to leave our paths and make a trail.

Reverend Dr. Michael Bos, Senior Minister, Marble Collegiate Church