“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both…,
and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.” – “Road Not Taken” – Robert Frost (1916)
At the beginning of Genesis, when God made people, God said, “Let us make humankind in our image.”
In today’s reading from Leviticus, the writer describes what being made in God’s image means.
To be made in God’s image is to be made holy.
God says, “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.”
I like to think of this holiness as a gift that resides in each one of us throughout our lifetimes.
We choose to cultivate this gift of holiness out of gratitude and in praise to the One who created us and gives us the opportunity to be holy.
Cultivating this gift of holiness means that we have the privilege of being perpetual students of God,
because the more we learn about God, the more we learn about who we want to become.
And we learn about God by loving God.
Think about what being in love means. Spending time with the beloved, doing things with and for the beloved, praising the beloved, telling others about the one you love, the list goes on, and I’m sure you could add some ideas to this list.
Loving God is so important that the first of the ten commandments that the Israelites received was about loving God completely.
“Thou shalt love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.”
Some Jewish people strap little black leather boxes known as tefillin to their heads and wrists every day. The little boxes contain the Shema which begins with that first commandment to love God completely.
Many Jewish homes, and some Christian ones too, have little tube shaped containers called mezuzahs attached to their doorways with these same words about loving God. These physical reminders help the people who have them remember to love God all day long, in their going out and in their coming in.
When a lawyer asked Jesus which commandment was the greatest, Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
Then Jesus added the second commandment.
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Jesus was ingenious! Think about this!
If we are all made in the image of God, then when we love our neighbors as ourselves, we are also loving God, because our neighbors are made in the image of God just as we are.
How would your reactions to the people around you change if you remembered that each person on this earth is made in the image of God?
Hopefully, we’d love our neighbors with lovingkindness, mercy, and continual generosity, because God is loving, merciful and generous and we want to love God back in the same ways that God loves us. When we love our neighbors with kindness, mercy and generosity, we are loving God back.
So I like this idea—that every person I meet serves as a reminder to me to love God with all my heart, with all my soul, and with all my mind—each person I’m with is my tefillin and my mezuzah. As I love my neighbor as myself, I remember at the same time to “Love the Lord my God.”
So the love we have for one another is a reflection of the love we have for God.
The love we have for one another is also an indication of how we are progressing in the art of becoming holy.
Now wouldn’t it be wonderful if we were just automatically holy, the way God made us?
But God gave us free will, so we may choose not to ever open this gift of holiness that God has given us. We could choose to open the gift of holiness, but then lay it aside and forget about it.
The book of Psalms opens with today’s psalm about making the choice to love God.
“Happy are they who delight in the law of the Lord. They meditate on the Lord’s law day and night.”
As Jesus tells us, the Lord’s law is about love, our love for God, and our love for our neighbors who are made in the image of God.
Who would not delight in meditating on how to love God night and day?
But we get so distracted!
Most of us have a variety of choices we can make about so many things. These choices can become distractions which may not only confuse us but confound us so completely that we end up not making a choice at all.
We can get lost in a thicket of choices.
In his famous prayer, Thomas Merton seeks direction when he is lost.
The direction he chooses, hoping for find the right path through the thicket of uncertainty and confusion, is to honor his desire to please God.
Here’s the prayer.
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope that I may never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my struggles alone. Amen.
Merton says that in the prayer that “I know that if I desire to please you, you will lead me by the right road.”
Listen now to this famous poem by Robert Frost. The title of the poem is The Road Less Taken.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost reading this poem
Throughout our lives, we come to a place where two roads diverge.
Often, nothing will indicate which path we should choose. One road looks just as fair as the other, both seem to have been equally well traveled by others, and both equally lay there, waiting.
Like the poet, we will have to choose one of the ways and continue our journeys.
Either of the paths we choose can be the one that carries us ever more deeply into love for God and love for our neighbors.
No matter who we meet and what they do, good or bad, any people along the way can serve as our tefillins and our mezuzahs, as we remember that they too are made in the image of God.
Regardless of the path we walk, we can make the path we have chosen the way of holiness, our road way of delight in the Lord.
And that walk of delight in the Lord and the love of God and our neighbor will make the path we have chosen the road less taken, and that is the road that will ultimately make all the difference in our own lives, and in this world.
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