Well, I gave it a 10. The image made me stop and think. That by itself is enough to say an image worked. Additionally, I considered a couple of other things in scoring this:
1) It takes fortitude to praise God publicly, and in the context of this challenge theme I think it was a great opportunity to do so.
2) I also figured the photographer was probably getting hammered on this so I tossed him a 10 to help lift him up.
On a technical point, one commenter mentioned the crop & aspect ratio of this. I have to agree that adding a movie frame type border (top & bottom) would have made the presentation stronger.
That's a road definitely overly travelled - didn't meet challenge. technically, violinist is quite correct; dull lighting, bad crop. lacks of "punch".
For your next entry avoid unusual aspect ratios, if you can't crop better, add an irregular border (movie style black bars had enhanced this image much compositionwise). Go for more contrast.
Wow, your metaphor came in even under mine! We are both misunderstood artistes. This didn't come up for me in voting, though I did look at it when browsing the images right after the starting rollover. I definitely got the metaphor, but then my own was also misunderstood. (Perhaps it was that my sign implied the existence of a road that it came in a touch higher?)
As far as the image itself, I think it's decent, and the shallow DOF guides one's eye to the passage on the page. As violinist suggested, religious messages may not always go over well here, and though it's actually a pretty decent shot, it doesn't have any "wow" factor.
Bad crop, bad lighting, boring subject, subject not overtly related to a 'road' in the literal sense, religious props attract low votes like dog poo attracts flies.
While it's a shame that only a literal representation of a road seemed to have a chance of doing well in the challenge, you should take a look at any of the top 10 shots and list out what it is you like about them and in what ways they differ from this shot. That exercise will teach you quite a bit and your next entry will no doubt benefit from it.
I'm not sure I can agree with the assessment that Christianity is a "road less traveled", if that is the correlation you are making. I think Exodus would be a more symbolic chapter to have the book opened to as it, in name and content, allude to a road less traveled - a road out of bondage and into an unknown world, yet one of hope. The shallow DOF is well done to focus on the word "road", but that is a bit shoehorned and obvious. The blue page marker with its bit of color actually pulls the eye away from the focal point.
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