Detour

The highway of the upright avoids evil; those who guard their ways preserve their lives. Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. Proverbs 16:17-18

I hate traveling and getting stuck in traffic due to construction or an accident. It can tie up ridiculous amounts of time (often for what appears to be nothing) and ruins a travel schedule that was going well. On a few occasions I have been vigilant enough to look ahead enough to see potential slowdowns and detour around them. I wish there was a more reliable way to see these pitfalls and find ways to avoid them.

This is a true spiritual principle for us as well. If we have decided to follow Christ, it is necessary that we pay attention to the road that we travel and look to avoid things that cause delays and destruction. We can't cruise along and pridefully believe that we have things conquered or we will quickly find ourselves waylaid along our journey. Scripture (and experience) caution us to guard our path or we will end up causing destruction to ourselves and those that are important to us. This means that we have monitor our conversations and avoid coarse talk and gossip. We learn to protect our eyes (and mind) from impurities on our TV, in movies, on the Internet, or in person. We choose to avoid places that we know will influence us to make decisions that will only destroy our family and not build them up. We don't engage in "harmless flirting" to make ourselves feel better when we are married, but quickly run the other way. 

Being on the "highway of the upright" doesn't mean that we will never see any evil--it means that we work diligently to avoid it. We make the right choice to detour around the things that can derail our life.