I not talking about an eating utensil in the road. I am talking about when you come upon a place in your life’s journey where you must make a choice to go one direction or another. You know, a fork in the road.
It occurred to me this morning that there is a particular fork in the road that each of us probably stumbles upon on a daily basis. It probably makes for some pretty interesting aerial views of our journeys through this life. The fork I speak of is the one with the signs CAN and CAN’T.
Henry Ford is the one who is quoted as saying,
“If you think you CAN and if you think you CAN’T, you are right.”
How many times a day do each of us face the question, “Can I do this?” How many times do we answer, “I Can”? How many other times do we answer, “I Can’t”? How many times do we say, “I can” and then wish we had said, “I can’t” and visa versa?
How many of us ever take the time to stop and give pause and consider how powerful our ability to think actually is? God thought, then said, and there was. Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni thought and there was his famous David. Bill Gates thought and there was Microsoft. You might think, and there will be this fabulous dessert on your dinner table tonight.
How many split second judgments about our abilities must we make in order to effectively choose which direction to go? The Apostle Paul wrote, “I CAN do all things through Christ who gives me strength.”–Phillipians 4:13 He didn’t say “some things…maybe a few things”. Paul had come to an understanding that anything was possible in relationship to God.
He had been one of the most powerful and outspoken opponents of the followers of Jesus. He found himself on the road to Damascus when he had a personal encounter with God that changed the entire direction of his life…a fork in the road, so to speak. He had a choice put upon him that the vast majority of us never get. But then I don’t imagine that many of the rest of us have been struck blind by The Light and spoken to directly by God. He was chosen by God for his path.
The vast majority of us will choose for ourselves. And there are a myriad of possibilities in life when we choose to think “Yes, I can”. When we know that God is vested in the success of our lives, we can say “yes” to things that maybe don’t make sense to others, or maybe seem a bit out of our ordinary or out of our comfort zones. We can also say “I can’t” and that is OK because it is also very possible that God will put us through things that will show us quite the contrary. God is in the “yes I can” business.
How many people on this planet are simply stumbling through life, falling on the roads, tripping in the sand, knocking into their fellow travelers with little or no thought to what they are doing or how what they are doing is affecting others on the road. And how many are living with a true sense of purpose and direction, giving thoughtful consideration as to which fork in the road is the right one at this time? How many flip a coin and simply ease on down the road?
I have chosen the “Can’t” road before and suffered the consequences; like watching others enjoy the benefits of having said “I can” or missing an opportunity that would have propelled me further up the road (kind of like drawing an Advance to Go card in a monopoly game). If you choose enough “Can’t” forks in the road, you will lose all sense of value in this life. You will view yourself as a failure, a reject, someone so flawed as to be useless to anyone.
And yet the “Can’t” fork in the road is not a hopeless path because God is aware of both the road and those who are on it. What He has made is of value to Him even if it isn’t recognized. It is declared in scripture that God is at work in each of us to will and to work for His good pleasure. Our success pleases God. Like I said, He is in the “Yes I can” business even if you are on the “no I can’t” road. All roads lead to Him anyway.
Just be mindful of your path and believe in your abilities to complete that which you put your mind to do. As you think, so you are, and if you think you can, you are right. And when you come to that fork in the road, choose the CAN side a little more often than the CAN’T. You might be pleasantly surprised at how talented you really are and how greatly God has gifted you.
