Maybe it’s time to buy a plow …

Limantour Beach in the Pt. Reyes National Seashore just north of San Francisco is one of my favorite beaches on the planet.

When I used to live in the bay area, I would take advantage of any chance I could to enjoy that seashore when the weather was nice enough to be on the beach, which wasn’t often.

Behind the miles of sandy beaches are hills on which the National Park Service has developed and maintains a series of trails (the picture below was taken by a photographer from one of those trails). On my beach outings, I used to spend about half the day traversing the trails before finally making my way down to the beach where I would spend the remainder of the afternoon.

While hiking along these developed trails, I would sometimes notice a very faint trail, paths not made by the Park Service, but by hikers who left the more manicured paths to meander wherever they wanted to go. As more and more people explored these off-the-path trails, the increasing volume of use would beat down the vegetation and soil and begin to form a new trail. The more the unauthorized path was used, the more the increased trampling over time hardened and compacted the dirt to create a new path.

That hard dirt from those unauthorized paths remind me of the people of Israel as described by Hosea. Israel had wandered from the path of righteousness that God called them to, and instead made new paths of idolatry which they thought they could travel with impunity.

They couldn’t.

God would not tolerate the wandering onto unauthorized paths of sin by the people …

“The hearts of the people are fickle; they are guilty and must be punished. The Lord will break down their altars and smash their sacred pillars,” Hosea 10:2.

The people had wandered so far for so long, their hearts had been trampled to a hardness as they kept wandering from God out onto the paths of sin. Hosea had a warning for them:

“I said, ‘Plant the good seeds of righteousness, and you will harvest a crop of love. Plow up the hard ground of your hearts, for now is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and shower righteousness upon you,” Hosea 10:12.

How much like those ancient Israelites are we?!

Christ has come to lead us into a life of righteousness:

“God has united you with Christ Jesus. For our benefit God made him to be wisdom itself. Christ made us right with God; he made us pure and holy, and he freed us from sin,” 1 Corinthians 1:30.

“May you always be filled with the fruit of your salvation — the righteous character produced in your life by Jesus Christ — for this will bring much glory and praise to God,” Philippians 1:11.

“And He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed,” 1 Peter 2:24 (NASB).

Like those hikers at Pt. Reyes who grind down the vegetation to form a new path … like those ancient Jews who wandered from their covenant with God to explore the depths of idolatry … we, also, have wandered so far from Christ’s path of righteousness that we have trampled down our hearts until they are hard. We have worn into our lives new trails from our own explorations into sin. Hosea’s warning from long ago rings fresh in our ears today:

“I said, ‘Plant the good seeds of righteousness, and you will harvest a crop of love. Plow up the hard ground of your hearts, for now is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and shower righteousness upon you,” Hosea 10:12.

Have you wandered on your own, far from the way of Jesus Christ, that you’ve trampled down your heart until its hard?

Is it time for you to “buy a plow” — to “Plow up the hard ground of your hearts …”? Or are you faithfully walking in the righteousness of Jesus Christ by following Him each day?

Scotty