Road trip! Every six months or so, I do a road trip. Over the hills and through the woods to grandmother’s house I go. This usually entails hours and hours and miles after miles of interstate highways, State toll roads and the occasional road designated only by a number.
The trip also entails listening to a little nag pestering me to go this way and that. Turn left, turn right, take the next exit, nag, nag, nag. Lucy is my traveling companion, she does not eat much, but she just refuses to shut up. Lucy has an English accent that does not make her droning any less annoying.
Lucy sits on the dashboard of the car in her 3 inch by 4 inch box. Lucy is the name that we gave to the car’s GPS. Lucy was the first English name that came to mind when we heard her voice. Lucy was named after the character Lucy Pevensie from the C. S. Lewis classic Narnia. Small, English and annoying, she had to be Lucy. Kind of like the little sister that I never wanted
Although I have now taken this trip four times and could find my way through three states to get to my Grandmother’s house, I still rely on Lucy to get through some parts of the trip. She ticks off the miles and gives a turn by turn commentary of the trip. Even though we bring out Lucy on every one of our trips, we have, missed a turn or two which just causes her to say,” recalculating, recalculating.” Lucy searches for a way to get us back on track and going in the right direction.
Life is full of wrong turns. We turn left instead of turning right. What looks like the right path for our lives can turn out to be a dead end or worse we can find ourselves miles from the place that we wanted to be. We can get further and further from the right path. On our own we can get ourselves desperately lost.
The good news is that we don’t have to go it alone. We have our own GPS that we can follow. For those who are willing to listen we have God’s Positioning System. God says in the book of John, “My Sheep know my voice and they follow me.” Through the pages of our bible, through our church services, and even through our prayers we can navigate through life by listening for God’s voice.
Through the midst of the chaos and tumult of our busy lives we hear his turn by turn directions. But we don’t hear him in the whirlwind, we don’t hear him in the earthquake, but we can hear him in his still small voice. By listening for his voice, we can avoid the dead ends, one ways, and the wrong turns of life. We don’t have to worry about getting lost, but even if we do get off course, God’s word recalculates to get us back on the right path.
