If you do whatever I command you and walk in obedience to me and do what is right in my eyes by obeying my decrees and commands, as David my servant did, I will be with you. I will build you a dynasty as enduring as the one I built for David and will give Israel to you. – 1 Kings 11:38

Today’s Scripture Reading (September 25, 2016): 1 Kings 11

“Two roads diverged in a wood and I –

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.”

The words, of course, belong to Robert Frost. They form the concluding lines of his poem “The Road Not Taken.” The poem begins with a dilemma.

 “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be on traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth.”

Frost’s poem illustrates well our lives. There are many things that I wish that I could do better, many opportunities in my life that I have left untaken. But the human problem is that we cannot do everything. Even a “Renaissance Person” or a “polymath” is not good at everything. Maybe we could be, except that we, at some point, had to make a choice.

Frost in his poem ponders one of those decision points in his life. He wonders about the difference that the choice will make. In the end, he decides to explore the ground taken by a few rather than following the crowd. He takes the path less travelled. And in the end, he is not sorry for his choice, for it has made “all of the difference.”

Sometimes we miss the similarities between King David (Israel – the United Kingdom) and King Jeroboam (Israel – the Northern Kingdom). Both kings followed after kings that had been disobedient to God during their reigns. This disobedience meant that the Kingdom was about to be taken from the hands of the rebellious king and placed into the hands of a rival – from Saul, the kingdom was given to David, and from Solomon, the kingdom, or partial kingdom, was granted to Jeroboam.  God chose both kings. Both kings were promised great dynasties if they would be obedient to God. We sometimes forget this astounding promise given to Jeroboam - I will build you a dynasty as enduring as the one I built for David. Sometimes I wonder what that might have looked like, after all, the dynasty God built for David included the Messiah – Jesus Christ. Was there an alternate reality where the dynasties once more came back together with the birth of the Messiah?

Unfortunately, we will never know the answer to that question. Ultimately, both David and Jeroboam chose different paths. Jeroboam opted to follow his own wisdom and not God’s, while David chose the road less travelled, and waited on God throughout his reign. David’s road resulted in a blessing the Jeroboam would never know. And the road less travelled made all of the difference.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Ecclesiastes 1