The Narrow Way Travellers

The way is steep, and rocky. The path is narrow and easy to wander from. The fields on either side are lush and green, and the view worthwhile if you know where to look, and what you’re looking for. But yes, the way is narrow and hard to follow. The wide, smooth road is much easier to walk, and it always seems so closely parallel to the narrow path, but the destinations are so different.

Grace is God’s gift to us, grace to walk the narrow path, to climb the treacherous hill. It’s so easily received, once we know what we have. Grace pours down like rain once we recognise it. It falls like asphalt to smooth the small, faltering steps we take.

Grace is the most costly of all the things God has given. The ease with which we accept it is overwhelming, the cost and brutality through which it is supplied is an ongoing wound. So easy to take, but it cost so much to give.

How do you respond to such a gift? The gift of a narrow road, but a priceless destination? The gift of the One Who Travels With Us, the gift of the One Who Came To Open The Gate, the gift of the One Who Provides Every Strength we need along the way?

The gift we have to offer in return is a gift in kind. For His great cost we find ourselves at the precipice of Great Cost ourselves. Ours is the gift of Discipline, the Way of the Disciple. For in accepting Grace so easily, we must choose to offer the painful sacrifice of Being-A-Disciple and all that it entails, and so experience in a small way the pain of the Father.

The Way of the Disciple is to find the Character (which comes from perseverance) to pursue the steep path, the Vision to see what God reveals along the path, so unique to each one of us and yet each sight an intimate revealing of the Father. The Hope to walk still when the steps are lit only one by one, and when the Way is lonely.

The Way of the Disciple is to accept and know loneliness as being without the company of other travellers. To learn the discipline of hearing the Master’s voice. To learn obedience. To learn to Love holiness and integrity. To pursue them with wold abandon. To choose others, to lose your life willing in the act of serving Others.

The Way of the Disciple is to lose your life not in martyrdom but in selfless expression of the Saviour’s Love. It is a great pain, a living wound. But where there is hurt, love, and you will find there is no more hurt, only more love.

There are many who choose the way of the field. The lush green grass between the narrow road and the smooth. They travel close enough to the narrow that they are ever at the edge of losing their footing, stumbling back onto the narrow way. Creating new scars that show they belong to Christ.

The Way of the Disciple, the gift of Discipline is our costly gift to God, and the easy acceptance of His grace becomes greater and greater as you go. The burden becomes indeed light, as the path reaches new peaks and greater heights. Each step strengthens you for the next, and your scars become the signs that show; you are a Narrow Way Traveller.

onward, to the distant shore
onward to my Father’s house
to a land I’ve never been
places only Heaven sees

to this day, I pledge my sight
not to close or turn my eyes
from the path, so steep inclined
this the narrow path I find

to the clouds of greatest sorrow
still I know my Saviour’s pain
and the Gospel Love’s companion
shapes my faith, my heart, my soul

find me climbing in the morning
taking step by step in starlight
for I travel where He leads me
on the narrow way I go

there He finds me, there He lifts me
with His hand so strong and still
bears me onward when I falter
when I fear and fail Him still

still I choose You, dearest Saviour
still I choose this rocky way
by my scars Lord, does Love grow here
so to love and bear Your name

love grows quickly by the hour
deeper still as yet I climb
hand held tightly to my Saviour
arms outstretched on either side

bring me Lord to your good measure
teach me wisely teach me well
let me learn the path so holy
help me climb that narrow way

grace that holds me while I tremble
lets me lean on Hope and Faith
grants me peace when storms are raging
grace that leads me on the way