There are no shortcuts to any place worth going – Beverly Sills
Wouldn’t it be great if rather than taking the long way round, you could take a quick little shortcut and reach your goal faster? Being able to cut out the ‘in between’ and instead jump from the start straight to the finish sounds amazing. However, the bit in the middle is sometimes just as important and valuable as the end result. Shortcuts may sound like a dream come true but the process is part of the reward. Very often you can’t have the goal without following the correct path.
Back to square one
A few years ago we bought a dishwashing machine for our family. My dishwasher is possibly my favourite appliance because it saves me hours of standing in front of the sink washing up after feeding my household. As wonderful as my dishwasher is, it does have it’s limitations. If I’ve roasted something in the oven and the dish has become charred and pieces of roasted food are welded to the bottom I know the only way to remove the crusty bits is to scrub by hand until it all comes clean. There have been times when I’ve attempted to put a dish in this state into the dishwasher in the hope of saving myself the trouble of doing it by hand. Every single time I’ve tried to take this shortcut the dish has come out of the machine still dirty. I’ve ended up doing what I should have done in the first place and scrubbed by hand to achieve the desired result.
Do it right
Trying to get around the correct way of doing things very often sees you back at the beginning, doing it the way you tried to avoid. Shortcuts tend to leave you with less than perfect results, wasted time and more than likely a certain amount of frustration. Whether it’s relationships, your education or building a career that will reap the results you desire, if it’s worth having then it’s worth doing properly the first time around.
Only one way
There are many people in the world today that would like to know God. The idea of being connected to the Power who holds all of creation together is very appealing, but very often they look for a shortcut and go about searching for him in a way that cuts out the process he himself gave us. God put in place a path for us to follow that would lead directly to him but for many reasons people choose to look for an alternative route. The bible tells us that Jesus is the only way to have a relationship with God. Jesus himself said the he is the way. There is no shortcut or detour that will lead to the same place. Any other path will lead you to a different destination. It’s through a relationship with Jesus that we are able to find and know the Father.
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