The Road Not Taken

Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

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 traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.


When I saw this fork in the road that Frost poem immediately popped in my head. We read it in high school and I imagine again in American literature in college. For me the last two lines are the best and most important part of the poem, kind of the whole point.
It also reminds me of being in Sunday school when I was six or seven, and Rebecca Kerby putting two images up on the flannel graph board: a yellow, pretty path made of light, and a narrow, thorny path. She asked us which path we thought represented the way to God. We all said the wide, pretty, brightly lit path. But no, the lesson that day was out of Matthew 7:13-14- You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.
To take the road less traveled is hard; whether that means blazing trails in Africa or Arkansas. Saying ‘no’ to the materialism and investing time and money for God’s Kingdom can be a thorny and lonely road in America, that doesn’t change based on location.
As followers of Jesus living in a world ruled temporarily by Satan, how can expect anything different? To daily buck a system that the majority doesn’t even question takes energy and strength that I can’t drum up from within myself.
So I take comfort that though I have chosen the path less traveled, I will never travel alone. And I know that in the end, it will indeed make all the difference.