Rerouting

Have you ever been out driving and taken a wrong turn?  I have.  Once when I was visiting a friend I took the wrong exit.  Unfortunately, there was no way to get back on the freeway again heading in the same direction at the location of where I exited the freeway.  After turning right and heading across the freeway I travelled through a couple of intersections before I turned left again.  Now I was travelling on a road that theoretically was parallel to the highway.  Night was coming on and I ended up in this small town.  It was pretty empty.  I pulled over to look at my phone and try to figure out where to go.    In the meantime, a hoon sped past me.  Boy am I glad that I was pulled over and that crazy driver is in front of me instead of racing up behind me, I thought.  Eventually, I confirmed that I was headed in the right direction and so I pulled back onto the road again.  After several minutes I caught sight of the freeway and was soon cruising along on it once more.  I knew where I was for sure now and I knew where to go.  A few minutes down the road I happened to make another wrong turn, but I realised immediately and was able to make a U-turn and head back in the right direction.  Finally, I made it to my destination on my roundabout route.

We like to think that life is like following a route on our phone.  God has it all mapped out.  We just need to pray and read the Bible and follow it.  We might take a wrong turn, but that is OK because God will just reroute us.  We can choose whether or not to follow the route.

Sometimes we are travelling through life in a car where we are not the driver.  Sometimes the driver takes a wrong turn that has devastating consequences for them, the others in the car and the others on the road.  It may not even be their fault that they took a wrong turn.  Perhaps someone else was reading the maps and telling them what to do and they gave the wrong instructions.  I've experienced that. 

While this analogy seems nice, except for the fact that we can't always be the driver, I don't think it is very realistic.  I don't think life is quite like following a detailed route, like travelling from one location in Melbourne's west to another in Melbourne's east.  I've done that before too and made some wrong turns with a phone that didn't have the capability of rerouting me.  That resulted in me having to find a side street to pull over into so that I could re-enter my destination and get a new route (or doing it while driving on a freeway that had me heading north instead of west!).  Shhh!  Don't tell anyone!  Needless to say I was so grateful when I upgraded to a new phone and had the luxury of being automatically rerouted when I made a wrong turn!

I think life is more like the trip I made when I moved interstate.  I had a final destination where I needed and wanted to be, but it was up to me to decide how I was going to get there.  I was travelling from Melbourne to NNSW.  Because of the situation with COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns et cetera I desired to avoid Sydney.  Hence I chose to travel the inland route.  I passed through a number of different towns and had stops and detours for food, fuel and sleep along the way.  There was no right or wrong way for me to go so long as I continued to travel in the general direction of my destination.  There were two fairly direct routes that I could have chosen (coastal through Sydney or inland through Dubbo), but there was a lot of choice within those routes.  Obviously, if I had headed west towards Adelaide I wouldn't have reached my destination but neither would I have been heading in the general direction of my destination.

As Christians, God has given us the Bible.  He hasn't given each one of us a detailed GPS route telling us exactly what decision to make and when.  The Bible contains information about two possible destinations.  Once destination is heaven and the other is everywhere but.  Just like my one destination was home and the other option was everywhere but home.  The Bible contains tips and tricks on how to reach the destination of heaven and where you will end up if you don't end up at that destination but it doesn't outline each individual turn to make.  It isn't a GPS.  God doesn't want robots in heaven.  He wants intelligent human beings who want to be home with Him and who have chosen to follow his tips and tricks so that they can reach that destination.  He wants people who are heading in that general direction.

Sometimes, because we don't have a GPS telling us where to go, or we are in a black spot, we need to get out of our cars and ask someone for help.  Because we don't have a GPS telling us what choices to make in life, sometimes we need to get out of our self-sufficiency and ask someone for help.  Somewhere along the way on my journey through life I picked up this idea that if you pray and read the Bible you will have all you need to manage any challenge that comes your way all by yourself.  When that idea was put to the test, it didn't hold up.  I didn't find the help that I needed in praying or reading the Bible, but people came into my life that did provide the help that I needed.  Numerous people spread over a number of states and over a period of time helped me to conquer the enormous challenges that I faced in my life.  They were my lifesavers.

Let's reroute our thinking.  Head in the general direction of heaven, if that's what you want to do.  Read the Bible and pray to help you along the way.  Ask for help from other people when you need it and provide help to other people when they need it.