A Highway for Our God

My reading today in Proverbs reminds me that narrow is the way of the Lord. We need to prepare our hearts, whether we receive what God has to give us is up to us and our attentiveness. In Proverbs 16, the Lord says:

1 The preparations of the heart belong to man,
But the answer of the tongue is from the LORD.

And the better we prepare our hearts, the clearer answer He can provide. Not that there is anything wrong with His message, but like the imperfect vessel, we can be a poor recepticle for His utterances. We distance ourselves from God by our attitudes, or sin can be an obstacle to God's otherwise clear communication to us. Sometimes, it may be some fork in the road, and we need only choose the right path. More often I think, we might ask that God by some provision make straight the path, that we might not stray to one side or another.

17The highway of the upright is to depart from evil;
He who keeps his way preserves his soul.

I think that's the sense that Elijah, and later John the Baptist, cries out a call to repentance. As prophesied in Isaiah 40:3:

3The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
"Prepare the way of the LORD;
Make straight in the desert
A highway for our God.

The appeal is at first emotional, immediate, a harkening to attention. From that moment on, though, the making of that highway for the Lord is our job, our duty. It is the way we ready ourselves for our communion with God. It is part of how we repent, we make our way straight.

18Pride goes before destruction,
And a haughty spirit before a fall.

The dangers of losing our focus is ever before us, one of the greatest risks is that we become prideful. We might even develop pride in our obedience to God, as if to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

19Better to be of a humble spirit with the lowly,
Than to divide the spoil with the proud.

And in the end, humility is the surest preparation for our hearts. We who are not equal to God, who are sons in His inheritance only by the sacrifice of Jesus, can seek His favor. That we might stray neither to one side or the other, that we might avoid the trap of pride. For the prideful may feel the pumped up glory of their own regard, but in doing so, the spoils they are left with is the vintage of the grapes of God's wrath.