Dangerous Shortcuts

On November 18, 35 year old James Kim and his family left their San Francisco home for a Thanksgiving holiday trip to visit relatives in Portland, Oregon. On the trip home, they planned to take a shortcut over the little traveled Bear Camp Road through the rugged Oregon mountain wilderness near Rogue River. During the night, they began to encounter heavy snow. Soon their 2005 Saab wagon was stuck and they huddled together for warmth, thinking someone would find them in the morning, but no one came.

For three days they ran the car heater to stay warm and ate what little food they had with them. When the gas ran out they burned all the tires, even the spare, to stay warm. With no more heat and food running out, Kim decided he would leave the vehicle and look for help. He said he would return in five hours, but was gone for two days. On the second day, the vehicle was spotted by a search helicopter and Kim’s wife and his two daughters were rescued. Kim’s body was found about a mile from the vehicle. Gauging by his tracks, he had walked about ten miles in a circle before succumbing to hypothermia.

Speaking with reporters after Kim’s body was found, Terri Stone, an innkeeper at the lodge in Gold Beach, where the Kims were to have stayed the night of Nov. 25, said the Bear Camp Road is shown on some Internet road-direction sites as the best way to get to the coast from Grants Pass, but she advises against it. "It looks like the shortest distance, but it is very, very treacherous," she said.

Sometimes we are tempted to take moral shortcuts in the course of our lives. God’s word warns us, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” Lured by the promise of easy, painless success, men often compromise biblical standards and ignore the internal moral GPS God has given us – our conscience. Paul reminded the Corinthians, “For our boasting is this: the testimony of our conscience that we conducted ourselves in the world in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom but by the grace of God, and more abundantly toward you.”

Sadly, we are not the only ones who suffer when we make a wrong moral choice, our families suffer as well. My brother in Christ, today you may be facing a severe temptation to compromise what you know is right, in order to get ahead. May God give you the grace and courage to do the right thing, to make the right choice, regardless of the sacrifice and inconvenience. Your family and friends are watching and counting on you to make the right decision.

Shoulder to Shoulder,

Gregg