The Road He Took: A Lenten Reading of Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”—Heather Cadenhead

by Heather Cadenhead

Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” is typically considered an autumn poem and of course it makes sense that it is categorized as such. Frost, after all, drops the reader in the middle of a “yellow wood” with two roads, one traveled and one “want[ing] wear.” We can almost hear the soothing rattle of leaf against leaf. Crisp air fills our lungs as we “look…down one [road]” and, alongside Frost, choose the overgrown and glittering road “less traveled by.”

As I’ve read and re-read this poem over the years, I cannot help but think of another “less traveled” road. This road is not canopied in gilded October trees. No woodsmoke-scented breeze envelopes those who walk this path. Sacrifices, for some, outnumber the patchwork maze of fallen leaves on Frost’s road. I refer to the Narrow Road—a road that, Scripture tells us, few find.

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” (Matthew 7:13-14)

The Greek word for way is hodos. At times, Scripture refers to the hodos as a physical road. At other times, the hodos is intended to be metaphorical. Like its Greek counterpart, the English road, too, might be defined as a physical path or a metaphorical one. In the case of Frost’s poem, the “two roads [that] diverge…in a yellow wood” are both. Frost implies a physical as well as a metaphorical journey. In just twenty snappy lines, Frost traces the flight of the mind as well as that of the body. In the Gospel of John, we find the very same word used for Christ. He—and only He—is the hodos. The Narrow Road is indeed the Lord Jesus Himself.

“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’” (John 14:6)

In “The Road Not Taken,” Frost expresses his regret that he cannot “travel both [roads].” He stands in place for a long time, looking down one road “as far as [he can], noting “where it [bends] in the undergrowth.” Then, he takes “the other” road, musing that this particular path might indeed have “the better claim / because it [is] grassy and [wanting] wear.” Some impulse compels Frost—the poet does not explain—to take the neglected road. While living, Frost referred to himself as an “Old Testament Christian.” Perhaps, in part, he had the prophet Isaiah in mind when he wrote “The Road Not Taken.”

“And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it,’ when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left.” (Isaiah 30:21)

In conversation with himself, Frost commits to “[keep] the first [road] for another day.” Still, knowing too well “how way leads on to way,” the poet doesn’t imagine that he will ever find a reason to return. He predicts that, someday, he “shall be telling this [story] with a sigh.” The reader very nearly hears that sigh. The die is cast. Frost takes “the [road] less traveled by.”

The Christian, like Frost, faces a choice of paths. In his Gospel, Matthew observes that “the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction.” He begs the reader to avoid the well-traveled path and to instead choose the “one less traveled by.” That gate, Matthew writes, is narrow. That way is hard. Chillingly, he adds that “those who find it are few.” Amid Lent—a season of prayer and fasting for many Christians—Frost’s poem reminds the reader that it makes “all the difference” to choose the harder, narrower path.

Christ faced His own fork in the road. One road led to earthly glory, devised by Satan.

“Again, the devil took him [Jesus] to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Be gone, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’ Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him.” (Matthew 4:8-11)

The other road led to Christ’s own death, unspared from any measure of physical, emotional, psychological, or spiritual torture. It was a dark, friendless road—the road an all-knowing God put before His Son as the Only Way. It behooves us to remember that Satan didn’t approach Jesus on the first day of His fast. He approached Him on the fortieth (Matthew 4:8-11). Satan played a long and twisted game, lost in a degenerate scheme to stop The Unconquerable God: to plant a flag in the world created through Jesus (Colossians 1:16) and to enslave His created beings—the very beings that the flesh-wearing God was here to redeem.

I’ve heard some people argue that Christ was tempted in every category of sin in which humans are tempted. In fact, I once heard a sermon on all the sins Christ “struggled with.” Christ struggled with greed, the preacher boomed. Christ certainly struggled with pride. The preacher got quiet for a moment. Then, he whispered: Christ even struggled with lust. Some might call such a teaching heedless. Others might call it heretical. Whatever the case, it is certainly a misinterpretation of a passage from the Epistle to the Hebrews:

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15)

It is important to note that our modern understanding of temptation is wholly different from the definition we find in Scripture. The Greek word for tempted, in this instance, is pepeirasmenon, which comes from the Greek word peiraō. In English, peiraō is translated as “to test, make trial of one, put him to the proof.” That definition speaks to the aim, or desires, of the tempter. It in no way speaks to the desires of the person who is being tempted. When the writer of Hebrews speaks of Christ being “...in every respect…tempted as we are,” the writer of Hebrews is not speaking of Christ battling greed, pride, or lust. It would be impossible for the Son of God to struggle with greed, given that “every beast of the forest is [His], the cattle on a thousand hills” (Psalm 50:10). It would be impossible for the Son of God to struggle with pride, given that Christ “and the Father are one” (John 10:30) and “God opposes the proud” (James 4:6). Finally, it would be impossible for the Son of God to struggle with lust given that Christ Himself declared that anyone “who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). The writer of Hebrews, instead, is speaking to the fact that Christ was tested as we are. Christ was presented with the same opportunities to sin. In spite of those opportunities, He was entirely “without sin.”

If, this Lenten season, you choose to sacrifice some food or habit, know that you are chasing after the example of the Long-Suffering God. We do not serve a God who very nearly chose fleshly vices over the redemption of mankind. What anathema! We serve a God who willingly “gave himself up for us” (Ephesians 5:2) and “[laid His life] down of [His] own accord” (John 10:18). May Christ’s example of steadfast righteousness—the heft of humanity’s sin stretched across His Spirit and backbone—move us to choose the “road[s] less traveled by” in our own sojourns. Where we find occasion to pander to God-fashioned souls with easy lies, let us choose the harder path of honesty. Where we find occasion to hurt with careless words, let us choose the harder path of self-restraint. Where we find occasion to turn our faces from human beings who suffer in ways that are inconvenient to our carefully-ordered lives, let us choose the harder path of love and compassion. Scripture states unequivocally that “all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12). We were never meant to travel “the way [that] is easy” (Matthew 7:13).

Unlike Frost—and many of us, I daresay—Christ was not conflicted in His choice of paths. Christ was not “sorry [he] could not travel both” the road to Calvary and the road to Satan-concocted glories. He “came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). For millennia, “no step had trodden black” the road to Golgotha. Piles of slaughtered lambs and oxen would not undo the curse. Only God Himself could write the story told “ages and ages hence”—that God Himself chose “The Road Not Taken” and, for those who put their trust in Jesus, “that has made all the difference.”

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Poet and essayist Heather Cadenhead publishes a monthly newsletter about her life as a writer and mother of two sons, one of whom is diagnosed with non-speaking autism.

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