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


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Don't Fall Asleep

Image
Be quiet!  No I'm not mad at you.  I'm actually looking out for you, trying to help.  Lord knows I need to be quiet more.  This isn't about being more ears than mouth - although that is a good idea too!   It is really hard for us to quiet our minds.  We are so used to the stimulation all around us and nowadays the powerful computers we all carry around, occasionally to make phone calls, makes it even more difficult to stop... and.... just... listen...  I wonder if that moment of silence in church is treasured by some and is torture for others?  I treasure it and wish it was longer.  Probably because I have trouble doing it by myself. I just read an article that a friend of ours wrote about going through radiation treatment.   Her nurse told her to "lay heavy" in the machine that rotated her around and applied the radiation.  Each of the 30 days she did this became special to her in a strange way.  She was finally able to lay down, forget her to-do list, and be
Read more

The Cry of Our Souls

Image
Psalm 42:1-2,5-8,11   As the deer pants for flowing streams,      so my soul longs for you, O God.   We know what thirst for water feels like. It is an unmistakable sensation. When we experience thirst, it may be because we missed earlier cues to hydrate. Now our body, already becoming dehydrated, has sent us a more obvious signal, an uncomfortable cue, one we will certainly recognize and act on.   But do we recognize when our soul thirsts for God?   My soul thirsts for God,      for the living God. Parenting manuals will tell us that when a baby cries it is important to consider the sound of the cry. They tell us that careful observation will help us to distinguish between a cry of hunger and a cry of pain, between the cry of a sleepy baby and the cry of a baby who is merely bored and in need of stimulation. For if we offer our infants milk every time they fuss, we are in danger of training them to seek food every time they feel discomfort; we risk confusing them, comp
Read more

Dinner Conversations

Image
Every night at the dinner table, our family takes turns telling each other what we’re thankful for from the day. It never fails that one of our kids shares that they’re thankful for a good dinner, even if they struggled to get all of it down. While the practice can seem mundane and routine, our hope is that one day, the practice of gratitude that we’ve engrained in them (and ourselves) will help us on the days where it seems the world has nothing in it for which to be grateful. Maybe we can consider it practice for those coming moments of despair-that there is still some blessing that deserves our gratitude. Isn’t that what Jesus calls us to do? We are called in so many ways to reflect on the abundant blessings of God. Consider this passage from 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18:     Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances,  for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.   This directive is strong-no matter what is happening-be joyful, pray, give thanks. I think we
Read more