Proverbs 4:12

When thou goest, thy steps shall not be straitened; and when thou runnest, thou shalt not stumble.

Monotony and crises

The old metaphor likening life to a path has many felicities in it. It suggests constant change, it suggests continuous progress in one direction, and that all our days are linked together, and are not isolated fragments; and it suggests an aim and an end. “When thou goest”--that is, the monotonous tramp, tramp, tramp, of slow walking, along the path of an uneventful daily life, the humdrum “one foot up and another foot down” which makes the most of our days. “When thou runnest”--that points to the crises, the sudden spurts, the necessarily brief bursts of more than usual energy and effort and difficulty. And about both of them, the humdrum and the exciting, the monotonous and the startling, the promise comes that if we walk in the path of wisdom we shall not get disgusted with the one and we shall not be overwhelmed by the other. But before I deal with these two clauses specifically, let me recall to you the condition, and the sole condition, upon which either of them can be fulfilled in our daily lives. “The path of Wisdom” assumes a heightened meaning, for it is the path of the personal Wisdom, the Incarnate Wisdom, Christ Himself. And what does it then come to be, to obey this command? Let the Christ who is not only wise, but Wisdom, choose your path, and be sure that by the submission of your will all your paths are His, and not only yours. Make His path yours by following in His steps. Keep company with Him on the road. You will say, “Leave me not alone, and let me cling to Thee on the road, as a little child holds on by her mother’s skirt or her father’s hand,” then, and only then, will you walk in the path of wisdom. Now, then, these three things--submission of will, conformity of conduct, closeness of companionship--these three things being understood, let us look for a moment at the blessings that this text promises, and first at the promise for long, uneventful stretches of our daily life. Perhaps nine-tenths at least of all our days and years fall under the terms of this first promise, “When thou walkest.” For many miles there comes nothing particular, nothing at all exciting, nothing new, nothing to break the plod, plod, plod along the road. Everything is as it was yesterday, and the day before that, and as it will be to-morrow, and the day after that, in all probability. Now, then, if Jesus Christ is not to help us in the monotony of our daily lives, what, in the name of common sense, is His help good for? Unless the trivial is His field, there is very little field for Him, in your life or mine. We all know the sense of disgust that comes over us at times, and of utter weariness, just because we have been doing the same things day after day for so long. I know only one infallible way of preventing the common from becoming commonplace, of preventing the small from becoming trivial, of preventing the familiar from becoming contemptible, and it is to link it all to Jesus Christ, and to say, “for Thy sake, and unto Thee, I do this “; then, not only will the rough places become plain, and the crooked things straight, and not only will the mountains be brought low, but the valleys of the commonplace will be exalted. “Thy steps shall not be straitened.” Walk in the path of Christ, with Christ, towards Christ, and “thy steps shall not be straitened.” Now, there is another aspect of this same promise--viz., if we thus are in the path of Incarnate Wisdom, we shall not feel the restrictions of the road to be restraints. “Thy steps shall not be straitened, although there is a wall on either side, and the road is the narrow way that leads to life, it is broad enough for the sober man, because he goes in a straight line, and does not need half the road to roll about in. The limits which love imposes, and the limit which love accepts, are not narrowing. “I will walk at liberty, for I keep Thy precepts”; and I do not want to go vagrantising at large, but limit myself thankfully to the way which Thou dost mark out. Now what about the other one? “When thou runnest, thou shalt not stumble.” As I have said, the former promise applies to the hours and the years of life. The latter applies to but a few moments of each man’s. Cast your thoughts back over your own days, and, however changeful, perhaps adventurous, and, as we people call it, romantic, some parts of our lives may have been, yet for all that you can put the turning-points, the crises that have called for great efforts, and the gathering of yourselves up, and the calling forth of all your powers to do and to dare, you can put them all inside of a week, in most cases. “When thou runnest, thou shalt not stumble.” The greater the speed the greater the risk of stumbling over some obstacle in the way. We all know how many men there are that do very well in the uneventful commonplaces of life, but bring them face to face with some great difficulty or some great trial, and there is a dismal failure. Jesus Christ is ready to make us fit for anything in the way of difficulty, in the way of trial, that can come storming upon us from out of the dark. And He will make us so fit if we follow the injunctions to which I have already been referring. Without His help it is almost certain that when we have to run, our ankles will give, or there will be a stone in the road that we never thought of, and the excitement will sweep us away from principle, and we shall lose our hold on Him; and then it is all up with us. But remember the virtue that comes out victorious in the crisis must have been nourished and cultivated in the humdrum moments. For it is no time to make one’s first acquaintance with Jesus Christ when the eyeballs of some ravenous wild beast are staring into ours, and its mouth is open to swallow (A. Maclaren, D. D.)