by Bethany Hargett - Used by permission
(Note from Lois: Ladies, you may want to print this article for each of the special young people in your life. This is an excellent article from one of our "Heart to Heart" ladies! Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family has also written a powerful book entitled Life on the Edge which goes into even more detail for youth in choosing the right path for life during this crucial time. "When you stray from God's plan, you can have your "kicks," but you can't control the kickbacks for you or those you love!" Instead, why not camp on James 1:17 where we read, "Every good gift is from above." It would be wise to refocus on the One who promised to give you every good gift.)
Bethany's Introduction: This is written especially for one very special young person in my life, but is appropriate for all of you or for someone you may know. So I send it to you this early morning, after laboring much of the night, with love and concern for the pitfalls before you. This is for each young person in the family to have their own copy, if the parent so desires. Please, read, and consider deeply this parable of life.
You have begun your journey of life, and it has been wonderful! At every bend, it seems, new scenes of wild beauty flash before your eyes. You have thrilled at gorgeous sunsets and breathtaking dawns. You've seen the lovely and graceful doe with her speckled fawn by her side lift her head and look at you as you glide on by,. You have tilted back your head at the regal flight of the eagle, soaring with astonishing ease above, and then plunging abruptly into the crystal stream and rising again to bear the prize of a flipping, dripping fish to her young ones. There is so much to see and learn.
You are not alone on your journey, although you do paddle your own canoe now. You have had your life greatly enriched by the earliest guides of your life. Although these guides are the earliest, and bear a great responsibility to you, and desire everything that is good and right for you, even they can lead astray if they lead without the guidance of the Great Guide.
The same is true of the other, more distant guides of your life. Some of these have passed in and out of your life, leaving a mark, but not staying there for long. Some have even been the earliest guides of your earliest guides. One or more are special guides that have, by reason of the value of the guidance they give, been given permission by your earliest guides to give detailed directions, and even warnings of the many pitfalls along your path of life. These special guides are dedicated to one thing, that of pointing you to the most important Guide of all. This is a Guide that never fails, that never lies, that never sleeps, and that never errs in judgment. This is the only Guide that will ultimately bring your journey to a successful end.
This Great Guide has entrusted you with a paper Guide with no beginning and no end, and with every answer for every perplexity you will ever face on your journey of life. What a treasure it is to have this, as many have had to paddle their canoe without this Guidebook that never fails. And there is another Guide, one that cannot be seen! This is an amazing one, and although it is there for all, few will ever receive it. It can never leave you once it is yours, and as long as you keep your own canoe free from mud, debris, pleasures, and the weight of possessions, you can hear this guide saying, "This is the way, walk ye in it."
You see, all is not beauty and glory along this river. There is often great danger, and that of varied sorts. In the river itself are rapids, waterfalls, cataracts, and whirlpools, jutting rocks and fallen trees that block free access. The seasoned guides specially assigned to you have passed this way already and will usually know where these dangers lie, and if they are alert, and reading the Guidebook themselves, can give timely warning. But there are dangers that are not predictable as to their location. Along certain long, wild stretches of the river are pirates, thieves, enemies of virtue and goodness. If you were to pass through their infested areas without protection, and they were ready for you, you could not fight them off yourself, but would be sure to be overcome and wasted, perhaps even destroyed. There are snakes of the poisonous kind, and vicious creatures of the deep, that would drop on you as you pass under trees, or come up against your fragile canoe from the bottom to tip you into their gaping jaws. You need the help of your guides to escape them, and especially that of the Great Guide.
I have not yet described your companions. These are given to enrich your life. Some bear a family resemblance to you, and share the same earliest guides. Some come along side for a season, share some adventures with you, and then disappear into fond memories. Some share many adventures, and paddle beside you a great distance. Some are living, breathing, and have often been on the river of life about the same amount of time that you have. But there are other companions who are not living. They are shadows of lives that have lived, and that usually you have never known. They would have been preserved on paper, or on screen, or on some sort of memory device that allows you to listen. They can come in different forms as well. They can be stories, texts, songs, music, advice, dramas, even just narrations. These shadows act the same as living companions, since they are the fruits of the labor of those who have once lived, or who are still living outside your acquaintance.
There is a great danger in companions. While there are several kinds of guides, there are only two types of companions. Those that point you to your personal guides and those that pull you away from them. The first of these may not understand all the dangers themselves, but they follow their own guides as well as they can, sometimes failing and receiving injuries from not listening, but always trying. They would encourage you to do the same. They have never been this way before either, so cannot know the dangers intimately. But, knowing their own failures, and desirous to share their own small successes, their life and words both point you the Great Guide.
The second type of companions will entice you away from your guides, and before long, actually become your guides, by your own permission. Sometimes these companions can just be happy-go-lucky, never really listening to their guides because they are having too much fun and they don't want correction. It may seem they are very happy, and thus attractive, but they are foolish and will get hurt. But other companions have a motive for what they do in winning your allegiance. Companions of this caliber are very subtle. They may come along beside your canoe a little at first and make you think they follow all their guides as you try to follow yours -- your earliest guides, your valuable guides, your paper Guide, and your invisible Guide. You may not even realize until it is too late, that their veiled words have divided you from all that have willingly and lovingly called out warnings, sounded depths, fought off the thieves, shielded you from lurking living creatures, charted your course, guided you around treacherous waterfalls, and sometimes even physically carried you when you were too weak to paddle your own canoe. They make you doubt your own guides. Since you can never gloriously finish this journey without your guides, those second type of companions are actually deadly. They would sever you from the only way to success you have.
There is an even greater danger in the shadows of lives you read, view, or listen to, since you cannot know whether they made their journey successfully or not. You cannot know how many whirlpools almost got them, how often pirates attacked and what they lost to them, or what quality of trip they chose. You cannot know their end. They only share what they choose to share and they may not be truthful. There is no counting the shipwrecks who have used these shadows as their guides. The earnest one on the journey of life will examine these carefully and discard most of them. For you are not left without guidance in your paper Guide, for it says you will know them by their fruits, as even these shadows of lives will either encourage you to your guides or away from them.
So how are you on your journey of life? Are you still listening to your guides and your Guide? Or have you exchanged the guides mentioned previously with these who were meant to be companions? How can you know when that is the case in your life?
Have you been turned away from the Great Guide and have you lost the sweetness of the inner Guide? Has the paper Guide lost its value to you, so that you no longer eagerly search it for answers and warnings? Have your earliest guides become your enemies in your thinking? Has your valuable, special guide, who labors in nothing else but to point you to the Great Guide, received attacks from your companions? Does it seem that when you look at your guides they are covered with mud and slime, that they have evil intentions, and that they are faulty and mistaken? Have you received accusations against them? Has your own canoe become loaded down with contention and strife, a place of nettles and thorns, discontent, and anger? Have you listened to your companions' assurances that there is no real danger in the places where your guides have insisted there is? Have you mocked your living guides by showing them how close you can come to the pirates and thieves without being attacked? Or how near to the whirlpool you can paddle without being sucked in? Do you laugh at their warnings? If not openly, then behind their backs and with your companions-turned-guides. These are sure signs that you will be destroyed, unless you make a change of counselors, for you are refusing to hear the voice of instruction and consenting to the enticement of sinners.
Remember, you are paddling your own canoe. It is your choice how you do it.
But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work. (James 3:14-16)
