The Ancient Path

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Our modern high-tech world improves our lives and thrills us with possibilities. Google provides answers within seconds. GPS gets us where we want to go more efficiently. Communication capabilities reach beyond our imagination. What will the mind of man come up with next?

Technology’s downside—our lives are not simpler but more complex. We face multiple choices daily with pressure to decide more quickly. Tantalized by options unlimited, we look for solutions that glitter and ingenious answers never thought of before. We’re trained to look to new ways and reject the old ones.

Jeremiah, a sage from times-gone-by, offers a different perspective.

“This is what the Lord says:
Stand at the crossroads and look;
Ask for the ancient paths,
Ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
And you will find rest for your souls” Jeremiah 6:16.

Pick out the verbs in this verse: stand, look, ask, ask, walk, find.
Stand at the crossroad, a place where two roads intersect, symbolic of decision-making.
Look at the choices. Weigh your options.
Ask for the ancient path. Where do you find the ancient path? In the Book.
Ask where the good way is. Ask God to show you.
Walk in it. Move forward by faith.
Result: you will find rest for your soul.

Technology benefits our lives in countless ways. And it seduces us with the allure of new things to try and new paths to take. But it can’t deliver on rest for the soul. That’s a claim that only God can make. He tells us where true rest can be found.

It comes from trusting the mind of our timeless God, more than the mind of man or machine.

5 comments to The Ancient Path

  • Robin Ricks

    Janet:
    All I can say is “thank you.” After hearing you speak at Believers Chapel, I invited three of my friends to form a Memory Group. We are all in Dallas and alternate homes monthly. Next week is our 6th time together. We want to register our group with you. All of us live in far north Dallas. The blessings of having God’s Word hidden in my heart have been bountiful. I have had some difficult family trials lately, and the joy of having the Holy Spirit bring to my mind just the verses that guide, correct, and comfort, which are stored in my memory, is a glorious thing. Thank you again, Robin Ricks

    • Wow Robin, this thrills me so much! I didn’t know about your group but I will register your group on the blog. We all have struggles in our lives that try to weigh us down. God’s Word has been my refuge in the chaos. “My soul finds rest in God alone. My salvation comes from Him. He alone is my rock and salvation. He is my fortress. I will never be shaken. ” Psalm 62:1-2

  • Barbara Hahn

    Janet,
    We have a new group meeting at Temple in the Oasis 2nd Thursdays of each month at 10:30. Ritchie will be attending when she is in town and there are 5 other ladies in the group.

  • Cherie

    “If you were a young boy at the time Jesus was; on your first day of school the Rabbi would take honey and cover your entire slate, your personal chalk board, where you would write. Honey was a sign of God’s favor. There was nothing more full of pleasure than honey. Then he’d say, ‘Now lick the honey off the slate and off your fingers.’ As you did this…the Rabbi would say,…’May the words of God be sweet to your taste, sweeter than honey to your mouth. May the words of God be the most pleasurable, the most enjoyable thing you could even comprehend.
    Then you would spend all your time memorizing entire books of the Old Testament. ” 🙂 We memorizers may not lick honey off a chalkboard, but hey(!) we know honey isn’t found in technology, but in the most “enjoyable thing we could ever comprehend”—God’s Word to us. Here is the link to the above quote. Janet’s extraordinary post today made me think of it. 
    http://ibobs.org/reading/CoveredDustRabbi.doc