Out Our Way: Check your back trail

Out our way, you can ride for miles over some beautiful country and just enjoy the scenery — but suddenly realize you have no idea where you are or how to get home. Years ago, out in the EmpireRanch in Wyoming, my friend and mentor Elsie told me to get in the habit of checking your back trail. The scenery doesn’t always look the same coming the other way. That ridge you rode over heading east looks totally different heading west. So she taught me to check my back trail so I could find my way home again.

As I have discovered, like so many others, sometimes you discover you really want to go home again but find you don’t know how to get there. Usually it is because I wander’d off the trail and went off on my own — and now have no idea how to get back. In the forest, folks would blaze a trail by cutting off bits of bark from trees as they went along to show the way they had come and to guide them on the way back. But in cattle country, the trees are few and far between, so you check your back trail from time to time and mentally “blaze” a trial by checking your back trail — looking at what that ridge, those rocks, that arroyo looks like from the other side. When you know what signs to look for on your back trail, coming home is pretty easy.

Israel, the Chosen People, had been led into the wilderness and out of slavery by the Hand of God. And along the way, He showed the people signs and reminders of who they were and whose they were. The 10 Commandments were like our Bill of Rights and Constitution — for it transformed them from a mob into a people and a nation. It gave them an identity as individuals and as a people. It gave them purpose and direction. But then folks began to lose that focus and identity. They began to wander into the ways of the pagans that surrounded them.

Being the minority is hard — we tend to want to blend in, go with the flow, and like mindless cattle, sheep, and lemmings, run off a cliff if everyone else is doing so. Israel began to forget who they were and Whose they were, and go along with the crowd, even when the crowd was wrong. God sent the prophets to remind the people to check the back trail, see who they had once been and reclaim their heritage and identity. In short, to come home.

Like great road signs in the wilderness, God sent one prophet after another to show them the way back. Many ignored them and continued on their way into the emptiness, being absorbed by the pagan world and lost forever. Ten of the 12 original tribes largely ceased to exist. The remaining faithful, primarily of the tribe of Judah — from which we get the word “Jew” — fared a little better for a while, but soon many of them also lost their way and were in the wilderness of paganism. For 70 years, they lived in exile in Babylon — modern day Iraq. Yet not all were lost. A “faithful remnant” had checked their back trail and remembered where they had come from, and so, when the time came, they were able to come home. 

“Set up road signs, put up guideposts. Take note of the highway, the road you take. Return, O Israel, return to your home.” During the years of captivity, the Old Testament as we now know it was written and studied in its present version — the synagogue was born and the rabbis — teachers — reminded them of the “back trail” and pointed to them home. Even in exile, the Nation did not die but became stronger than ever as focus and purpose were restored. Many scoffed and rejected the teachings of the “Law and the Prophets” and continued to go with the “crowd” and follow the blind and ignorant into the barren land of paganism where they and their popular idols died and were forgotten.

But not all.

As Jeremiah had been told by the Lord and faithfully shared with those who would listen, the Lord had not abandoned them in the wilderness and the “road signs and guideposts” had indeed been erected in the synagogues, showing the people the way home. Studying the back trail, the scholars, scribes and rabbis found the signs and the way back. Even before the return from exile and restoration of Judah — the nation was restored and the people reclaimed their heritage and identity.

We live in a time of equal trial as ancient Israel. The modern idols of power, control, and self-worship have arisen and lure the ignorant and unwary into the barren wasteland of the new paganism. Idols abound — both on the right as well as the left. Many of us, myself included, have wandered off the track and find ourselves in the barren wasteland these false idols offer in the name of “paradise.” Modern Babylon beckons and many are deceived. But some of us wake up and realize this isn’t where we want to go. Some of us begin to realize that we cannot serve the Lord using the devil’s tools — and, as tempted as we are to do so and go along with the high pagan priests and priestesses, claiming “the end justifies the means” and are applauded and cheered for it by their faithful followers — we cannot do so and stay true to ourselves and our God.  

The scriptures are the road signs and guideposts, and while these have often been moved about and manipulated to fool the ignorant and immature believers, everyone has access to the Word to read and the Holy Spirit to guide. Read the Old Testament — especially the prophets — and see if you recognize the same symptoms of creeping paganism in our own culture and society that led Israel astray. Then read the Gospels and the Epistles and see the road signs and guideposts that lead us home.  

Blessings!

Brother John

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John Bruington can can be reached at [email protected]