Robert Frost’s great poem "The Road Not Taken" ends this way:

That poem came to mind today on a 200 plus mile leisurely ride on my Harley. I found myself on roads I had never been on before, either on the bike or in a car. I went through towns I had never been in before. Part of the ride took me on the Kettle Morraine Scenic Road – leaning left and right on a snaking country road – you have to enjoy a motorcycle to enjoy that experience.

I love taking roads I’ve never been on before to see where they take me. The risk is not that great anymore. In our modern time frame, every road will lead to another road which will eventually take us to a known point of reference. Unless one freaks out, it is almost impossible to get lost. Way too much civilization and infrastructure for that.

But I got to thinking – what is it in us that makes most of us, if not all of us to some degree, step out in some direction into the unknown? Where do we get this sense of adventure? Where does the explorer urge come from? Now I admit that it is at varying levels in all of us – some of you might even respond that you are at a zero level. I’m not sure that is completely true. Our culture has certainly lulled us to sleep with routine and "the same old thing", but I think deep within the human heart is a longing at times to launch a new venture of some kind.

And I thought about the early explorers of our world and our continent. Talk about adventurers! No roads. No maps. No idea what was in the next mile or so. And yet something within them propelled them forward and those explorers became discoverers. What I did today on the Harley was just a infinitely tiny example of their experience – might even call it a micro-experience. I wanted to know where the road went. They wanted to know where the ocean or the continent went.

And I also wondered if that same deep longing for adventure and exploration might not be a God-given urge to thrust us toward Him. And once we found Him [and I do realize that He finds me first] it is that same urge that drives us deeper into that relationship with the invisible God and further out in the exercise of scary faith in Him. The Christian life can sometimes be a "Lewis and Clark" adventure with not a clue to what’s around the corner. Our only lifeline is a growing and maturing faith in the God who is leading us. And He seems to like to take us on the "road less traveled."