Have you ever had a bad experience with taking a shortcut when you were driving or hiking? You were sure that you could save yourself some time and distance by leaving what seemed to be the long, winding way and taking a shortcut.

Often a shortcut takes more time and effort. You can reach a dead end and have to backtrack, you can become lost, or you can end up driving on a gravel road or hiking through tall weeds or thick brush.

THE SHORTCUT TO PUBLISHING MY BOOK
Let me share with you an area where I struggle with taking a shortcut. I'm a writer, and I like to have my writing read. After all, communication is my main purpose for writing, and that’s why I've always had a drive to write books. I've published several books, and I've done it two different ways. There's an ideal way and then there's the shortcut.

The ideal way to publish a book is to submit the manuscript to a publisher who decides to publish it. The publisher takes care of all the costs of printing, distribution, and promotion. I published a book this way in 1986; it’s called Object Lessons for a Year, a book with fifty-two object lessons used by pastors and children's educators. As soon as Baker published it you could buy a copy in many Christian bookstores; my sister-in-law bought a copy in California soon after it was published. In the first two years it sold over 4,000 copies, and to date it has sold over 50,000 copies.

I submitted my book The Comparison Game to a couple of publishers and they weren't interested in it, so I decided to self-publish it. In two years it has sold under 40 copies.

It can be difficult and take a long time to get a publisher to accept your book, which happened with the object lesson book. The shortcut — the easy, quick way — is to publish a book yourself. The difference in my case, however, is between 40 copies being read in the first two years and 4,000 copies being read in the first two years.

You probably have your own story to tell about how a shortcut didn't turn out well. Sometimes a shortcut is not only the worst way to go, it's actually wrong because it's against God's will and His plan. Sometimes, to be frank, the shortcut is sin. Let's look at one man in the Bible who took a shortcut that proved to be not only disastrous but sinful.

ABRAHAM’S SHORTCUT
The great patriarch Abraham, who lived 4,000 years ago, is considered to be a spiritual giant in all three of the major world religions: Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. (He was originally called Abram, but later God changed his name to Abraham and changed his wife Sarai's name to Sarah.) Abraham became the father of two great people — the Jews and the Arabs — and we Christians also consider him to be a spiritual father. However, as great and godly a man as he was, he messed things up badly by giving in to the temptation of the shortcut.

Abraham was the son of Terah and was born in Ur of the Chaldeans. When he was grown and married to Sarah, he and his wife and some other members of the extended family moved from Ur to Haran. They lived there for a great many years, but when Abraham was 75 God said to him, “Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.” (Genesis 12:1) So began a journey that took many years. It wasn’t just a physical journey; it was also a spiritual journey. They ended up in Canaan, an area that we now call the Holy Land, but that was much later.

When they got as far as Shechem, “The Lord appeared to Abram and said, 'To your offspring I will give this land.' So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.” (Genesis 12:7) We have no record of Abraham's response other than that he did the good thing of building an altar to the Lord. We wonder what he thought about God's promise that he would have offspring when he was 75 and Sarah was about ten years younger than that.

The trip to his promised land had a detour. A famine hit the land and Abraham had to go to Egypt. God again promised great blessings for Abraham, who responded by saying, “‘O Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?’ And Abram said, 'You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.'” (Genesis 15:2-3) This was the first shortcut that Abraham was tempted by. It was a custom then that you could assign a much-loved servant to act as your child and receive your inheritance.

God vetoed this idea right away: “Then the word of the Lord came to him: 'This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.'” (Genesis 15:4) So “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” (Genesis 15:6) Abraham believed that somehow God would give him children and that he wouldn't have to adopt a servant as his son.

It's hard to keep believing a promise when the promise takes a long time to be fulfilled. Finally Sarah approached Abraham: “Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; so she said to Abram, 'The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her.” (Genesis 16:1-2)

In the ancient culture in which they lived this was an accepted practice. The baby born to a woman’s slave girl or servant could be considered the woman’s own child. (This wasn’t part of any of the many Old Testament laws; it was never God's will or part of His plan for His people. It was a secular law of the land.)

“Abram agreed to what Sarai said.” (Genesis 16:2) Hagar became pregnant with Abraham's child, and “When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress.” (Genesis 16:4) Suddenly she became Hagar the Horrible!

“Then Sarai said to Abram, 'You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering.'” (Genesis 16:5) She blamed Abraham even though it had been her idea.

“'Your servant is in your hand,' Abram said. 'Do with her whatever you think best.” (Genesis 16:6) As a result, Sarah mistreated Hagar. This shortcut to having a child certainly didn’t create domestic bliss; quite the contrary! Hagar ran away and later gave birth to a son named Ishmael.

About 14 years passed; Abraham was almost a hundred years old and Sarah was about 90. God appeared again to Abraham and told him specifically that he would have a son through Sarah. “Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, 'Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?' And Abraham said to God, 'If only Ishmael might live under your blessing!’” (Genesis 17:17-18) Abraham wouldn’t give up the idea that the child with Hagar was the link to fulfilling God's promise of a great nation.

“Then God said, 'Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac.’” (Genesis 17:19) God would bless Ishmael, too, but the original promise would come through a son still to be born to Sarah. (God must have a sense of humor, because He said to name Sarah's yet-to-be-born son Isaac, which means “to laugh.”) Sarah laughed, too, the day three angelic visitors disguised as humans told Abraham the same thing. Sarah overheard them from inside her tent.

A year later a son was born to Sarah; it was fourteen years after they tried the shortcut by having Hagar give birth instead of Sarah. The promise took a long time to be fulfilled, but it was.

The world still lives with the ramifications of this shortcut, because there’s still animosity between Ishmael's descendants, the Arabs, and Isaac's descendants, the Jews. A shortcut taken 4,000 years ago still has ramifications that are displayed in bold headlines in our newspapers and are often the opening story on TV news.

REVIEWING SOME SHORTCUTS
Let's reflect on some contemporary temptations of the shortcut. A student can get a good grade by taking a shortcut and cheating, or he can go the long way and study. A person can use a shortcut and intimidate someone to change by using a show of power, or he can go about it the long, harder way and influence someone to change by showing him love.

Couples can take a shortcut to intimacy by having sexual intimacy before the commitment of marriage, or they can take the long (and what some people see as risky) way of committing to each other publicly by marriage and then celebrate their oneness by sexual intimacy on their wedding night. A married couple can try to find a shortcut to the thrill of romance with the wife reading romance novels and the husband watching pornography, or they can take the long way of continually working to cultivate good communication and good sexual expression between the two of them.

A young person can take a shortcut by sticking with a low-paying job so he can get a new car right away, or take the harder road of getting some education or training for a job he'd really like to have and driving a clunker in the meantime. A person can take a shortcut of ignoring someone who has hurt them, or take the harder road of forgiving the person.

GOD’S WAY IS THE ULTIMATE SHORTCUT!
When you follow Abraham's route to Canaan — the Promised Land — you can't miss the big detour to Egypt that he had to take. Going from Haran to Canaan by way of Egypt is definitely NOT the shortest route! Humans build drainage ditches in a straight line. God’s drainage ditches — called rivers — are winding!

If we want to follow the Lord and do His will, we have to be ready to commit to the long haul — and often to a winding way. “'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,' declares the Lord. 'As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.'” (Isaiah 55:8-9)

There’s no short, easy way to do God's best and carry out His will. There’s no shortcut to become more like Jesus; the road has hard bumps and detours, and much of it is uphill. However, God is with us and He’ll help us; we aren’t left to fend for ourselves. Sometimes it seems that we have to be driven in desperation to depend on God. He reminds us, as He did Sarah when she laughed at the ludicrous idea that she would have a child at the age of ninety, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” (Genesis 18:14) Let's make a commitment to the way that's not the shortcut: the way that’s more challenging and takes longer. It may seem impossible, but with the Lord nothing is impossible.

Abraham and Sarah had a son named “to laugh” (more commonly known as Isaac). We can laugh for two reasons: because something is ridiculously impossible or because we’re really happy that something we thought ridiculously impossible is happening. May the latter be our experience! Let’s watch for the temptation of the shortcut and resist it, with the Lord's help!