Article November 6, 1965 Issue

Preparing the Highway for God

KATHRYN PAULSON GROUNDS

In constructing highways, engineers often find it necessary to fill in depressions, eliminate dangerous curves, and lower hills to provide for an effective and safe flow of traffic. The prophet Isaiah used this illustration to striking effect in these words (40:3, 4): "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain."

Human experience is comparable to a highway, and each individual is responsible in large measure for making it what it is. Constructed by spiritual qualities, such as purity, meekness, unselfishness, and love, it will carry one straight through the arid reaches of earthly circumstances to the kingdom of heaven—the realm of harmony—where one recognizes God, or good, as the origin and condition of all real being and man as the perfect child of the perfect Father-Mother, forever expressing health and holiness.

But if unspiritual qualities, such as envy, pride, malice, or resentment, predominate in one's thought, then the highway will he rough and unsafe, and many unnecessary detours will delay the progress of the pilgrim toward his goal. Selfish interests or sensual attractions will blind him to the worn, and possibly dangerous, conditions in his path.

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