“My foot has held fast to His steps; I have kept His way and not turned aside.” Job 23:11

Just an Inch

Walk His Way Revisited
First Posted April, 2014

When I was in junior high and high school, my family spent weekends on a boat docked in the back bay of Newport Harbor in Southern California. We often took our 30-foot cabin cruiser out of the bay into the deep ocean waters to fish or, several times a year, to go to Catalina Island.

This was decades ago, before GPS or cell phones or any other technological convenience that would have made finding our position a simple matter. No, we used huge rolled-up paper charts, a depth finder (so we wouldn’t run aground in shallow waters), and a mounted compass. The compass was the one tool we could not navigate without. It had, what seemed to me, zillions of tiny points, with occasional lines that were numbered every so often: 90, 180, 270, 360. 

Leaving Newport Harbor for Catalina, we had a 3-hour trip across the ocean, and unless it was a brilliantly clear day (which it almost never was—usually we had fog, clouds, and ocean mist), we could not see the island until we were very near. Steering by the compass points for three solid hours was the only hope we had of arriving at our destination. 

I was taught at a young age to follow those points. “Head 167 degrees west,” my stepfather would instruct. This meant I had to find that exact tiny point on the compass, and in the bobbing waters, breaking waves, and whitecaps swooshing all around us, compass swinging on its stand, I would peer intently at the compass to be sure we were on course. If I was to veer even a degree or two off course without correcting it correspondingly, we would be lost forever at sea. At least, that is what he told me.

Another example of getting off course just a bit is the chair set-up in our worship center. Our facilities director tells us that if his team starts the first row of chairs off by just one inch, by the time they get to the other side of the room, he will have lost space for 100 chairs!

Getting off the path can be imperceptible at first, but it can become a great distance over time. Soon, it becomes obvious to everyone else, and perhaps last of all to ourselves.

The path we walk as followers of Jesus Christ is a narrow one. “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matthew 7:13-14). It’s easy to get off course, and much harder to stay exactly in the center of God’s will. Thank God for sending the One who lights our way!

You have set a path for each of us to walk in this brief life. Help us to see Your light guiding us, and give us the will to follow where You lead, so we do not get off course and end up far from You in the last days. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.