4:26 – Ponder the path of your feet, and let all your ways be established.
I’ve never heard about a nun putting on a dress, or a gown, or a frock, or a smock, a cape, or a pantsuit. They always put on “habits.” When they do, they tell the world who they are and to whom they are devoted.
For the rest of us, our habits are not as obvious – but they tell others just as much about us.
Sadly, few of us make the effort to “Ponder the path of our feet,…” So our ways aren’t actually “established.” Our ways just follow along the path of least resistance.
Those paths often lead us to, or through, exactly those areas of life we don’t want to go to.
But, we can instantly begin to change our paths by “Pondering the path of our feet,…”
Pondering our paths is like sowing a crop.
A farmer sowing his crop chooses what to plant, and then plants that seed over and over; and then tends that field. When we ponder the paths of our feet, we choose the action to take; then we take that action over and over, and we protect it.
Does that mean it’ll be easy? Far from it. We live in a world where opportunity has to knock, while temptation only has to stand outside and whistle.
Charles Reade, the 18th century dramatist, put it like this,
“Sow a thought, and you reap an act;
Sow an act, and you reap a habit;
Sow a habit, and you reap a character;
Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.”
When we change our actions, we change our habits, we change our characters, and we change our destinies.
The question is: What habits are we putting on?
