Years ago Lewis and Clark set out across the western wilderness to blaze a trail over the Rockies. Their party included a French guide who took along his Indian wife. Life was rough and harsh for these men in the untamed wilderness. Each night the French guide would offer his squaw to one of the men for a price. Each night the men refused. Finally, these men crossed their last river east of the mountains. They needed horses to carry their luggage, their boats, and supplies. They asked the chief of a nearby Indian tribe for help. The Indian replied, “No help white man. White man cheat.” Lewis and Clark begged for help, but to no avail. “White man lie!” the chief roared. The Indian wife of the French guide stepped out of the party and said to the chief, “These men are different. They keep their promises to their squaws back home.” Then she told the story of nights by the campfire and the refusal of these men to commit adultery. She was able to persuade the Indian chief, and he subsequently loaned Lewis and Cark the needed horses. The explorers were able to cross the Great Divide, put their boats in the headwaters of the Columbia River, travel to the Pacific Ocean, and claim the Northwest for their government. Consequently, their greatest achievement was not geographical or political; it was moral. And without their moral character, Lewis and Clark would likely not have made it to the finish line of their journey.
Our journey through life will have some long and lonely stretches, times when compromise would seem a good escape, a way to make life more exciting, more mystifying, more self-satisfying. But, when we are tempted, if we can keep our heads and exercise righteous moral discipline/judgment, we will find down the road that we can experience God’s best in this life and His best in the life to come.
Pray with me…. Father, give us the wisdom of the man who said when standing at the intersection of right and wrong, trying to decide which way to turn, …. ‘Of what shall I think of such a thing in my dying hour?’ Thank you for history’s record of those who have chosen to make decisions with eternity in view. In Jesus’ name, amen
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