Focus On Your Goal

Focus On Your Goal…

We were walking across the sands of the plain. Grandfather said, Walk on and seek to walk a straight line.

So I kept walking as he watched. He let me walk on for a few minutes.

Stop, he yelled from the distance, Now turn around and look. I was sure I had been walking a straight line. But the footprints in the sand revealed that I had veered off to the right. Grandfather then walked to catch up to me.

Let me tell you a story, he said. There was once a king who issued a challenge to the princes of a neighboring land that whoever amoung them could, over a long journey of varying landscapes, walk in a straight line to the king’s castle would have the right to ask for his daughters hand in marriage.

The first Prince embarked on the journey, looking to his right and left to make sure he was not veering off in either direction. But, like you, despite his best efforts, the farther he journeyed, the more off course he veered.

The second prince determined to look down, to keep his eyes on his feet, making sure every footstep folowed in the same path as the footstep before it. But he too ended badly off course.

But the third prince embarked on the journey, looking neither right or left, nor down at his footsteps. And in the end, it was determined that he walked in a straight line. No one could figure out how he did it. So he told them his secret: All I did was look into the fat distance to the light on the crown of the castle tower. I didn’t look at my path or the landscape to my right and left. I just kept my eyes on that light and kept pressing forward to that light until I arrived there.

That, Grandfather said, is the secret to your walk in God. We are all to walk a straight path in God. But how does one do that over the course of a lifetime and over a long journey of changing landscapes and changing circumstances? Not by focusing on your circumstances or even on your own walk. Rather, you fix your eyes on your destination, despite your surroundings, despite the mountains and the valleys, despite the highs and the lows, despite even your own walk and footsteps. You fix your eyes on the Eternal, on Him and you press forward, always onward and closer to that goal, and you will end up there and straight will be your footprints in the sand.

Practice the secret of the third prince. In all things, in all situations, fix your eyes on your goal, on Him, and draw continually closer.

Psalm 25:15 My eyes are ever on the LORD, for only he will release my feet from the snare.

Walk daily with God at your side!

Love always,

Ed