What path are you on?

I’ll get to the path in a minute. First a confession, my backyard is ridiculous!

Over the course of years, I have become a clandestine showroom for Tuff-Sheds. I have three of them in the backyard. That is in addition to the original shed built by the Baptist deacons!

The sheds are connected with a boardwalk, so I need not walk in the yard. The most infamous of my sheds is the dog shed, which I call the doghouse. It is the smallest. I insulated it and finished the interior. It holds one doggy crate, a wing back chair, a 42-inch TV, an air conditioning unit, and has a doggy door to the outside.

There are times I am in the doghouse. People have seen my doghouse and asked if they could “be in the doghouse.”

This winter the dogs have created a path through the center of the yard. It is their short cut to the greenhouse. Yes, I have one of those too! They refused to walk on the boardwalk, choosing instead their own path.

Their path is the most efficient way to travel to the greenhouse from the backdoor.

The dogs are most often on the path. They have some kind of canine love for the contents of the greenhouse. They travel the path! Since it is properly tamped down, I now travel the path as well. The path became such because that was the way we traveled across the backyard. Do you have an animal path through your yard?

The Greek word for path is hodon.

In the story of blind Bartimaeus in Mark, we read that blind Bart was sitting at the roadside (hodon). After he receives his sight, he follows Jesus along the way (hodon). I remind you that Jesus said, “I am the way (hodon), the truth and the life.” (John 14:6)

There are other familiar places where this word appears. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus preach about the narrow path (hodon) that leads to life and the wide path (hodon) that leads to destruction. (We call that the path of least resistance.)

In Matthew 13, Jesus talked about the seeds and the soils. The first batch of seeds fell on the path (hodon) and the birds came and ate the seeds.

Can I change the translation in John 14? Can you read this verse as Jesus saying, “I am the path … no one comes to the Father but by me.”