Last month, I took some time for my annual retreat. While many times I like to do group retreats with other priests, for this particular retreat, I packed up my car & headed down to southern Ohio & a cabin in the woods in Hocking Hills for a solo retreat. I love being in nature & I love the Hocking Hills area. There is something so relaxing for me about the woods & the sounds of nature.

  While I would spend the majority of my time in the mornings with my coffee cup, my spiritual reading book, & with God in prayer, in the afternoons I would lace up my hiking boots & head out on some of the area trails. In the time that I was down there, I hiked roughly 12-13 miles. By the time I got back my legs were killing me, I had blisters on my feet, but I had also ga!ined some great insights in prayer with God! Though I’ve been down to Hocking Hills a number of times, this time I headed out on a trail that I had never traveled before. It’s the proverbial Robert Frost poem about the road less traveled, there was a fork in the trail & I had always gone the one way, but this time I decided to check out the other way. It was a beautiful trail, but also a very challenging one & there were a number of times where I thought to myself, “Am I even still on the trail?” But, then either in the distance ahead of or behind me, I would see other people on the same path as I was on & know that yes, I was still on the right trail.

  Our gospel this weekend finds John the Baptist sending disciples to Jesus to make sure they were still on the right trail in following Him & believing that He was (& is) the Savior of the world. Sometimes too in our own journeys of faith, we can find ourselves wondering in prayer if we’re still on the right path? We can find ourselves looking for signs that God is still there, that He’s still guiding us, that we’re going the right way.

  What signs might God be trying to show or point out to us? How might He be trying to reaffirm to us that we are traveling the path that leads to Him as we wonder as we wander? God is there, this week let’s pray for & open ourselves to greater insight from God we invite Him to show us where & how He’s leading us on the trails of life.

Have a blessed week!