Guided Like Oxen

Not long ago, as I laid in bed before ending my day, I had a thought. I was reading a chapter of Psalms. The thought was a metaphor for the way in which God might "guide" us. As a Christian, I often hear people say things like, "I felt God guiding me" or "God led me to do this or that." I've always taken those statements with a touch of skepticism. I do believe that God "guides" us, but I guess I'm still trying to figure out exactly how he guides us. This metaphoric thought has stuck with me long enough that I thought I should write it down. And so I type.

Here was the thought: in my mind, I saw oxen in a field, pulling a plow. The path was laid out for them. They knew where to go. The oxen really didn't even need a farmer behind them. The path was clear and they knew to follow it. That thought led me to a recent memory. While on a mission trip to India last year, I saw oxen pulling sugar-cane wagons along the road. The amazing thing was that the drivers were typically lying atop the sugar cane, asleep at the wheel. The oxen knew to follow the paved road. Their path was clear. They didn't even need a driver to direct them from the fields to their final destination; they just knew to follow the road. It was pretty astonishing.

Could this be how God "guides" us?

Within our free will, are there "paths" in our lives that are clear and that we should follow? Does God lay out the path, leaving it up to us to take it or to go another way? Without a path, we could go any number of ways—left, right, north, south. When it's clear, much of the confusion is removed from life's mysterious path. I found comfort in those thoughts. When we pray and trust in this God, maybe he will guide us. To paraphrase Leo Tolstoy, we may walk drunkenly along the path sometimes, but that doesn't mean it's the wrong path.