The day I walked from home to town, I stumbled upon a truth that would reframe the rest of my life.
There is a road I know well. It stretches from home to town, no shortcut, no alternative. Just your two feet and the distance ahead. One morning I set out on it, the way I had done many times before, and something stopped me mid-stride. Not a voice. Not a vision. Just a simple, stubborn thought that refused to pass:
Every step I take, the destination is one step closer.
I almost laughed at myself. It was obvious. Almost too simple to say out loud. But I kept walking and the thought kept walking with me, growing heavier with every stride, until by the time I reached town I was carrying something far more significant than what I had set out with.
Life is walking. And walking is choosing.
The Revelation of One Step.
Think about what it actually means to walk. You do not cover the whole distance at once. You are not teleported. You are not carried. You pick up one foot, place it forward, shift your weight, and trust the ground beneath you. Then you do it again. And again. And the road, the very road that stretched impossibly long before you, begins to shorten, not because anything changed about it, but because you kept moving.
That morning, I saw my entire life in a single stride.
Every choice I had ever made, to follow Christ, to pursue mission, to leave the familiar for the unreached, had not been one great dramatic leap. It had been one step. Then another. Then another still. Each choice was its own small foot placed forward in the dark, trusting that the ground would hold.
You do not need to see the whole road. You only need to take the next step.
This is the quiet revolution that road taught me. We spend so much of our lives paralysed at the beginning, overwhelmed by how far the destination seems, how many obstacles line the path, how uncertain our footing feels. And in that overwhelm, we do the worst possible thing: we stand still.
The Plough and the Forward Gaze.
Jesus once said something to a man who wanted to follow Him but first needed to go back and say farewell to his household. The response was sharp and clarifying:
No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God. Luke 9:62
I used to read that verse as a demand, a hard, unforgiving standard. But the morning I walked that road, I began to read it as a description. A farmer who looks back while ploughing does not just lose time. He loses the furrow. The line goes crooked. The seed falls in the wrong soil. Looking back is not merely a distraction; it is a disruption of the very work your hands are doing.
To put your hand to the plough is to commit to a direction. It is to say: I know where I am going, and I am going there now, one furrow at a time. The destination is not behind me. The harvest is not in what I left. Both lie ahead and only ahead.
That is how I decided to live.
Distractions on the Road.
I would be dishonest if I presented that road as a clean, uninterrupted path. It never is. The day I walked from home to town there were distractions, the noise of people, the temptation to rest too long, the moments where the dust made the way ahead unclear. Life’s road is no different.
There are distractions that look like opportunities. Voices that call your name from the roadside, offering rest that will become delay. Comparisons that make your progress look like failure when measured against someone else’s pace. Fear, which does not knock you down but whispers that the next step might be your last safe one.
And there is the pull of what is behind you, the familiar, the comfortable, the road already walked. Memory can be a beautiful thing, but unchecked becomes a leash. It holds you in place with one hand while the future recedes with the other.
I have learned to acknowledge these things and keep walking. Not to pretend they are not there. Not to be hardened against them. But to let the acknowledgement be brief and the step be decisive. The walker who stops to due to distraction never reaches town.
Consistently Moving Towards Destiny.
Here is what I know now, on the other side of many roads walked: consistency is not tiresome. It is not dramatic. No one writes songs about the ordinary Tuesday when you simply chose, again, to keep going.
But those ordinary Tuesdays are the whole story.
Following Christ has not been a single moment of surrender. It has been a thousand mornings of choosing Him again, when the choice was costly, when the calling took me far from familiar places, when the ground beneath me felt uncertain. Learning a new skill, building a life of integrity, serving the people God has placed before me, c cnone of these happened in a single stride. They happened step by step. Choice by choice.
The destination grows closer not because it moves, but because you do.
Consistency is not the absence of struggle. It is the refusal to let the struggle be the last word.
Every morning you rise and choose again to forgive, to serve, to believe, to press on, you are placing one foot ahead of the other. The road to your God-given destiny is not shortened by wishing. It is shortened by walking.
That morning, somewhere between home and town, the road became a teacher. And the lesson has not left me since.
Take the step in front of you. Make the choice the moment requires. Keep your eyes on the horizon and your hand on the plough. The destination you have been given is real and it is one step closer than it was yesterday.
Walk.