Isaiah 30:21 “And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, 'This is the way, walk in it...'”

A few years ago, my neighbor called me to ask if I had noticed any construction vehicles passing the road toward his house over the weekend. I told him that I had not seen any such vehicles. He and his wife had been out of town over the weekend and returned home to find that someone had removed all the gutters from his house. When he told me this, I immediately knew what had happened. We were about to put a new roof on our house and decided to replace our old gutters with new and larger ones in advance of the new roof installation. I had wondered why the gutter company had not yet come, and the delay was throwing off the schedule for the new roof. I told my neighbor this information and gave him the phone number of the gutter company. He found out that the company workers had not followed the word and address of their boss and had removed all the gutters from my neighbor’s house, rather than mine. So, my neighbor and I both got new gutters. However, I had to pay for mine, and his were free to the embarrassment of the company who didn’t follow the leader’s word.

Do we always follow our Father’s Word? We usually hear it but may not pay close attention to let it register in our mind, and we may go to the wrong address or do the wrong thing. With God’s Word, our Leader, we need to pay close attention to hear what He is saying to us. He will say to us, “This is the way, walk in it.” My gutter story above may be funny and amusing, but things in our lives may not be funny if we fail to hear and follow God’s Word to us. God’s Word will always tell us the way we should go in all of life, and it’s up to us to obediently walk in it. My guess is that the workers from the gutter company were reprimanded and learned a lesson to listen more carefully to their leader. When they later removed my old gutters and then installed the new ones, I did not mention their error. I felt that their embarrassment and corrective actions were enough punishment. When we don’t hear and follow our Leader’s Word, we can find ourselves in a similar situation to these workers mentioned above.