One Ron Brown told a story of what happened to his wife about half a century ago. When the wife first found out that she was pregnant, her doctor asked if she smoked. She said she did. The doctor told her, “Not if you want me as your doctor”. He then rolled out the statistics about the differences in birth weight, fetal heart rate, miscarriage rate and other pregnancy issues between smokers and non-smokers during pregnancy. In all cases, non-smokers and their babies did better when compared to smokers. That persuaded her to stop smoking. Ron added, “I didn’t say it was easy for her to quit. But it was important.”
It is often the case that important things in life are hardly easy, and easy things are seldom important. If someone’s philosophy is to pursue the easy course, they will miss out on significant things and never be among the shapers of society. When you take an aerial view of a river, you will see its twists and turns. That’s because the river is avoiding the hard places. From that we get this saying: “following the path of easy resistance is what makes men and rivers crooked”. Margaret Chase Smith captures it very clearly – “The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character.” This has a spiritual connotation and can impact on the eternal destiny of people. As we can see from our text, there are two ways leading to two different destinations. The broad, easy road leading to destruction. Incidentally that is the one mostly plied by many. The second one is the narrow, difficult path which leads to eternal life. What is easy may not be safe.