The Road Less Travelled

LOCH A TUATH NEWS -- February 2003

I have recently been re-visiting the poetry of Robert Frost. A dedicated student of classics, Frost's desire to teach Latin and Greek came to a sudden end when he had to leave Harvard through ill health. Eventually he taught literature both in America and in England, and by the time of his death almost exactly forty years ago (on 29 January 1963), was hailed as one of America's foremost poets.

My first encounter with Frost was his poem "The Road not Taken", and it has not lost any of its power in my reading of it. According to Frost's biographer, the poem was written after an incident which occurred during the winter, when a fall of snow had closed off many roads. Frost was walking towards the intersection of two roads, and saw a man coming towards the same point from another direction. The two men were similar in build, and would have collided at the intersection unless one of them stopped to let the other pass.

Frost was struck by what he saw as a mirror image of himself, and he stopped to let the other traveller pass. In his poem he drew the scene in a wood, where two roads met. He would have liked to take them both, but his poem is about the importance and the consequences of taking one as opposed to the other. It is about the importance of the decision itself. So he begins:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth...

And in the short poem he goes on to describe the choice he made:

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 travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Frost depicts what we all know -- that there are times when momentous decisions are difficult to make. In the absence of the ability to go two ways, we must decide which road to take. Some roads are well travelled, others less so. Whatever decisions we take, and whatever roads we travel will make all the difference both in our lives and in the lives of others.

The Bible tells of a point in the life of Lot, the nephew of Abraham, when he was given a choice. He could either turn eastwards and dwell in the fertile plains of Jordan, or he could go west towards Canaan. He chose the well travelled road that took him towards Sodom and Gomorrah, where the inhabitants were "sinners before the Lord exceedingly". Abraham took the road less travelled by, and it made all the difference to him, as God renewed his covenant with him, and established his promises with him.

Jesus made the same point. We can walk either on the broad, well-travelled road that leads to eternal ruin, or we can take the road less travelled by. Many have bypassed the opportunity to walk it; few find it attractive; all who choose it reach the kingdom through much tribulation. But all who have walked in the footsteps of Jesus Christ has discovered that the road less travelled by has made all the difference in their lives. May we learn to take up our cross and follow Jesus on that road that no-one ever regretted choosing.