Straight lines are easier to draw than straight paths are to walk. When we are trying to walk straight there are always obstacles in the path that will cause us to slow down, stop and sometimes go around or jump over from time to time. A similar term frequently used in relation to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is for us to hold on to the ‘Iron Rod’ or, as stated above, to be on a straight path. The scriptures state that once we have entered the gate (referring to baptism); ‘the path is straight and narrow is the gate…’ Yet, it is nearly impossible to live a straight and perfect life or to walk a straight path while we live in the world. It is a constant challenge for there are so many temptations, and even distractions that cause us to, using a railroad term, “jump the track” or stray from the straight and narrow. There is opposition in all things, especially in respect to walking a straight line. Yet, many of those distractions provide interesting and even valuable experiences for us. Some might call it the scenic route or even the rugged mountain bike route.
Years ago, when I was around twelve or thirteen, a friend and I would sometimes walk to the outskirts of our little town, in Washington state, to the city dump. There were a lot of rats that populated the dump. We would take our slingshots and try to ‘reduce their population’ by slinging rocks at them. The road out to the dump was a very curvy road, it actually followed a winding river to it’s destination. Instead of walking that long and curving road we would walk along the railroad tracks because they were straight and by doing so it only took half as long to get to the dump. After we tired of trying to hit but usually missing our targets, we headed for home and on the way it started raining and pretty soon we were drenched. Then it started getting cold and we began shivering. There was an old man that had a shack alongside the tracks. It was at the end of some railroad sheds where they kept two or three of those little hand pump maintenance cars. The shack was put together with sheets of corrugated metal over boards and was only about 8 × 10 feet in diameter. We knew him to be a kindly old man, and so we knocked on his metal door and asked if we could come in to get warm. He agreed to let us warm up by his little cast iron pot bellied heating stove. The stove was right next to his narrow cot that he slept on and the cot served as his couch (furniture), as well. He was sitting there in his long handled and quite dirty underwear. There wasn’t a place for us to sit so we just stood by the stove. He had a white beard and the soot from train smoke as well as the black soot from his stove had sprinkled his beard with black as well as filling in the wrinkles in his face. He had an open pot on the stove top that he was heating water in to make tea. When the water started boiling he put a handful of tea leaves into the pot. After a minute or two, he strained the tea into a cup to drink. He had a loaf of white bread, as I recall it was ‘Wonder Bread’ in ‘Wonder Bread’s colorful wrapping,’ and he would take a slice, break a piece off and dip it in his tea before putting it in his mouth. He offered us some of his tea, but we declined. The rain stopped after a while and we thanked him for letting us come in to warm up and we left. The railroad tracks were a straight route home but our deviating from it, to warm up in an old man’s shack, was an interesting experience. There are many deviations from the straight that provide valuable learning moments for us. You might say this was a scenic route.
Very few things in this world are straight, I remember using the term ‘straight arrow’ referring to someone that I admired and believed to be honest and good. Even straight arrows have flaws, whether homemade or manufactured very few are perfectly straight.
I appreciate what Apostle Dallin Oaks stated several years ago when he said, (paraphrasing) that we are all on a continuum, hopefully an upward track through life, trying each day to become better, more mature spiritually. As we travel on this continuum there are times that we lose ground. Meaning that there will be times when we falter and slip backwards and then we will try to regain our upward direction. We would be rare individuals if we never slipped backward from time to time. Maybe we could better describe our journey on earth as a variable, wavy line but mostly (hopefully) on an upward grade. We are not always dedicated to the lofty and noble highway, not always walking the line, not always on the straight, not always walking along the railroad tracks, not always on the narrow path, and not always holding onto the iron rod. But if we are people who are striving for the good in the world and trying to avoid the evil, our path will be mostly straight and in an upward direction. We may be able to draw a straight line but life is not a straight line. God bless us to travel the road we choose as carefully and as kindly as we can. When we finally reach the end, hopefully, the Master will say to us; ‘Well done thou good and faithful servant.’