I’ve been thinking a lot lately about difficulties and opposition, thwarting and wearing one down of a human in their strength to resist various courses of easy, forward movement.
What does God’s Word have to tell us about following easy pathways?
Off the top of my head, the following scriptures are coming to mind:
- “There is a way that seems right to a man but the end is the way to death.”There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” – Proverbs 14:12
- “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” – Proverbs 3:5-6
- “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” – Matthew 11:20
- “Don’t be unequally yoked with unbelievers, for what fellowship do righteousness and iniquity have? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness? What agreement does Christ have with Belial? Or what portion does a believer have with an unbeliever? What agreement does a temple of God have with idols? For you are a temple of the living God. Even as God said, “I will dwell in them and walk in them. I will be their God and they will be my people.” – II Corinthians 6:14-16
- “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” – Galatians 6:9
- “Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?” – Matthew 16:24-26
- “Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.” – Luke 12:48
I am increasingly weary and tired in a number of ways at times (in between experiencing God’s strength or His carrying of my weights for a time) and it can be hard to endure, and to hope, and to listen, follow and to obey God from moment to moment, day to day.
The path of least resistance is the physical or metaphorical pathway that provides the least resistance to forward motion by a given object or entity, among a set of alternative paths. The concept is often used to describe why an object or entity takes a given path. The way in which water flows is often given as an example for the idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_of_least_resistance
Bicycle traffic barrier used to slow down cyclists circumvented by a detour in the form of a desire path, thereby showing a literal path of least resistance
In physics, the “path of least resistance” is a heuristic from folk physics that can sometimes, in very simple situations, describe approximately what happens. It is an approximation of the tendency to the least energy state.[1] Other examples are “what goes up must come down” (gravity) and “heat goes from hot to cold” (second law of thermodynamics). But these simple descriptions are not derived from laws of physics and in more complicated cases these heuristics will fail to give even approximately correct results.
In electrical circuits, for example, the current always follows all available paths, and in some simple cases the “path of least resistance” will take up most of the current, but this will not be generally true in even slightly more complicated circuits. It may seem for example, that if there are three paths of approximately equal resistance, the majority of the current will flow down one of the three paths. However, due to electrons repelling each other, the total path of least resistance is in fact to have approximate equal current flowing through each path. The reason for this is that three paths made of equally conductive wire will have a total resistance that is one-third of the single path. In conclusion, the current is always distributed over all possible paths inversely proportional to their resistance.
The path of least resistance is also used to describe certain human behaviors, although with much less specificity than in the strictly physical sense. In these cases, resistance is often used as a metaphor for personal effort or confrontation; a person taking the path of least resistance avoids these. In library science and technical writing, information is ideally arranged for users according to the principle of least effort, or the “path of least resistance”. Recursive navigation systems are an example of this.
The path of least resistance applies on a local, not global, reference. For example, water always flows downhill, regardless of whether briefly flowing uphill will help it gain a lower final altitude (with certain exceptions such as superfluids and siphons). In physics, this phenomenon allows the formation of potential wells, where potential energy is stored because of a barrier restricting flow to a lower energy state.
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