All We Like Lizards

Do not stray.

Proverbs 7:25

It isn’t often that Canadians worry about crocodiles, but one summer, panic struck in Vancouver when reports surfaced of a crocodile on the loose. The reptile was finally captured and taken to an animal shelter. As it turned out, it wasn’t a crocodile at all, but a large lizard named Turtle who had wandered away from home. “He must have gone through the wooden gate,” his owners told the newspaper.

There’s a wandering instinct inside all of us. The Bible says, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way” (Isaiah 53:6). Perhaps the hymnist was remembering this as he wrote, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it; prone to leave the God I love.”

While the path away from Jesus may be aimless, the path back to Him is a straight line. There’s always a way back to the Savior, no matter where we’ve strayed. The week between Christmas and New Year’s Day affords a prime opportunity to correct unhealthy patterns in life, to make new resolutions for Him, and to get back on the “straight and narrow.”

Let’s say with the psalmist, “The wicked have laid a snare for me, yet I have not strayed from Your precepts” (Psalm 119:110).

There is nothing trivial in this life. By the neglect of slight commands, a soul may speedily get out of the sunlit circle and lose the gracious plentitude of Spirit-power.

F. B. MEYER