Life is filled with opportunities to take shortcuts. They always offer the hope of a better way or easier way, but in the end simply wind up often destroying those who take the shortcut. Sad reality? Hindsight being 20/20 tells us we should have stuck to the marked trail instead of taking the unmarked one. As if often the case, the unmarked, unfamiliar trail is the one which often leads to destruction.

Solomon put it well: “There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death.” Pr.16:29 (NLT)

During my study for this week’s message I ran across this story of the Donner Party. The shortcut ended up being a long cut.

Today is Father’s Day. While taking shortcuts takes in all of us, it most often is seen in men. A “get-rich scheme” here a tryst there. “I won’t get caught.”

Life offers us three trails: The Broad Trail. The Narrow Trail. And the Shortcut (which eventually dumps us into the Broad Trail.  There is no shame in taking the narrow trail, of having nothing to hide. The shame is in the doing and then hiding.

May we all take the Narrow Trail which leads to life, even if it the long way around.