THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED

Matthew 7:13-14

“Enter through the narrow gate.  For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

This passage was harder for us to understand in the US.  Maybe you could make a connection to hiking – hiking a wide, well worn path is much easier than one that you have to make a path for yourself.

Coming to West Africa has given us a much clearer picture of this phrase in the Bible.  In Cote d’Ivoire, there was one main road that headed north and south and EVERYONE used that road.  To try to find other ways around was dangerous and took much longer to navigate.  You had to seek out the right direction, pay careful attention to which way your headed, the potholes, and also thieves that wanted to take advantage of you being on a back road on your own.

The same with many of the streets.  As you can see in the picture, most roads are worn down by overloaded trucks and the water from rainy season.  For most roads, you can see the path that the motorcycles use and the part of the road that is not used because it’s too rough.  Everyone (both directions) follows the same path and if you don’t, it hurts.  It hurts the motorcycle and your bum. 

Many times driving down bumpy back roads or unfortunately choosing the “path less traveled” on these back roads, I’ve thought of the Christian walk.  It’s easier to chose the smooth path that most people travel on.  If you try for the other path, it hurts sometimes, you have to pay much more attention, and have to realize that people are going to look at you and laugh a little (really only white people would choose staying on the correct side of the road over a smooth path).  You also have to search hard to see where the path goes, unlike the smooth road that you can really just follow without thinking. 

I feel like Jesus is saying a hard truth about the Christian walk when he talks about the “broad road” and the “narrow road.”  He’s giving us the reality that it’s not going to be easy, there will be some bumps and bruises.  We’re probably going to lose traction and get off track sometimes, it will be hard to find our way back, and it will probably hurt, but  He says it’s an important road – the road that “leads to life.”

What Africa has taught me about the Bible

A couple months ago Steve and I were reading the account of the Last Supper, where Jesus instructs His deciples to go into town and find a place to have the Passover meal.  In the middle of reading the chapter, Steve stops and says, “weird.”  I mean, the whole part of Jesus asking them to find a man and ask for the room is kind of strange, but I asked him what he meant.  “Men don’t carry water,” he simply said. 

Sure enough, when we looked at the notes for the section, it said that a man carrying water, in those days, would be a strange sight and the disciples would easily recognize what Jesus said.  Because of the culture we have been living in for the last 14 months, we are more and more able to see the Bible through the eyes of people closer to that culture.

Since then, as we’ve been reading the Bible, there are so many things that we’ve realized that we understand better because of the West African culture we’ve experienced in Cote d’Ivoire (and now Benin).  We would like to take the next few blog posts to share that with you:

WOMAN AT THE WELL

When we lived in Niakara, each morning the young girls in our household would get up and pull water from the well.  We lived on a hill, so our well was probably a good 70 feet deep and it was a long, hard process.  After our family got enough water for the day, women from the neighborhood who didn’t have wells, or whose wells had dried up would come and fill huge bowls/tubs of water and transport them back to their houses on their heads.  All morning they would walk back and forth getting water, then pour it into a metal barrel to use throughout the day.

It was the same thing every morning and every evening. 

So, when I read the account of the woman at the well, when it says “it was the sixth hour” (of the day, meaning around noon), it caught my attention.  Another thing about West Africa – it’s HOT!  Okay, I know that doesn’t surprise you, but it gets so hot that no one really goes out at noon.  Usually shops are closed from 12-3pm for “nap time” because of the heat, so for a woman to be working like this at noon means she was avoiding something – the other women.  Another weird thing for this type of culture.

Since much of the work is manual and women don’t have time to just sit and socialize, most of the socialization comes around food preparation, cleaning, selling, or walking to and from the farm.  Getting water from the well is not just work, it’s a social hour.  Women talk, laugh, sing, and share what’s going on in their lives and the gossip from the community.

This women didn’t want to talk to, see, or socialize with the other women.  She was out casted…had shame. 

Just realizing the depth of this woman’s loneliness helped me realize what relief, what peace she must have had when Jesus told her about “a sprint of living water welling up to eternal life.”  How amazing it is that Jesus looked into her heart and gave her exactly what she needed – life.