Road Closed Ahead



Proverbs 3:5-7

5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart
    and lean not on your own understanding;
6 in all your ways submit to him,
    and he will make your paths straight.

The week that I met my husband was a whirlwind experience that swept us up in its intensity. At the end of that week, neither of us was eager to be ejected from the eye of this storm; but I was on Spring break, visiting friends in Indiana, and I had a train to catch back to Pennsylvania; it was time to come back to earth. In trying to delay the inevitable, we were running late for the train that would carry me away.

It was on this 45-minute anxious drive to train station that we came upon the dreaded “Road Closed Ahead” sign. I was panicked. The detour was going to keep us on major roads, taking us way out of our way. We’ll never make it in time!! John calmly made a random right-hand turn onto a smaller road. “What are you doing?!” I asked. “Oh, we will just go this way until we can turn left, and then we will travel that way a while, take another left, and get back to this road.” I was stunned. Was this man not who I thought he was? Was he crazy? In what universe can you take a right and then two lefts and end up back on the road you were traveling? If I tried this where I grew up, I could get hopelessly lost and turned around before I ever got to the first left. But this was northern Indiana…not a mountain, or even a hill, in sight. The roads between destinations were all laid out in predictable grids…a completely foreign concept to me.

The paths we travel in life have more in common with Allegheny Mountain roads than flat Indiana roads. How many times in life do we start down a path headed in one direction only to end up somewhere we never would have imagined?! But the Bible tells us that God will make our paths straight. Does that mean the paths of our lives will neatly line up in predictable grids when we listen to and obey God? Certainly not.  God’s paths are rarely straight, but your way is straight if your way has God in front. Try to listen to the Holy Spirit always and in all things. Follow, don’t lead. A spirit-led step will be a straight step…a straight step in God’s direction.

 

Kristin Keller, Grove PC Administrative Assistant and Financial Secretary


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