Scripture:
This is why I kneel before the Father. Every ethnic group in heaven or on earth is recognized by him. I ask that he will strengthen you in your inner selves from the riches of his glory through the Spirit. I ask that Christ will live in your hearts through faith. As a result of having strong roots in love, I ask that you’ll have the power to grasp love’s width and length, height and depth, together with all believers. I ask that you’ll know the love of Christ that is beyond knowledge so that you will be filled entirely with the fullness of God.
Glory to God, who is able to do far beyond all that we could ask or imagine by his power at work within us; glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus for all generations, forever and always. Amen.
Consider:
As a child, one of my parent’s favorite Sunday activities was to intentionally get lost. We’d all pile in our silver Chevrolet Celebrity station wagon (which later became a Pontiac Grand-Am Mini-van), fighting over who got sit in the backwards facing seat. This was always a bad move, because riding backwards in a moving vehicles in West Virginia virtually guaranteed you’d get car sick.
On the way to getting lost, we’d pick up a family bucket and sides from KFC. Dad would randomly decide to make a turn down and interesting looking back road and we’d drive until it looked like a good place to stop and have a picnic - an inevitable cold chicken picnic.
As a kid I thought these drives were incredibly boring. We did eventually end up with CD walkmans so we could at least listen to our own music instead of my parents “Old People” 70s rock. We read a lot of books or cross-stitched. I loved the logic puzzle books and crossword puzzles. Often, we’d end up just looking out the window at the scenery while my brother told increasingly bad Dad jokes. He was an old man when he was born.
These journeys through unexpected places taught me two things. First, I never get lost. I may be momentarily turned around, but I can almost assuredly get you back to some recognizable point along the journey which will lead you back home (a lot of it has to do with the position of the sun in the sky). Second, I learned that the unexpected destination is often the one which leads to the best views and places of rest. We saw parts of West Virginia only seen by the weary travelers willing to take a dirt road in a minivan over the crest of the mountain to see what’s next.
When we look back on this journey with God, we can often see the places of greatest learning, deepest growth, and best views were the destination unplanned and unexpected. When we arrive at the place we always intended to be, we often feel let down, the result never quite as fulfilling as we expected. If, instead, we let God lead us where God plans for us to go, the end result is often terrifying, but exhilarating. We find ourselves in the midst of that “lostness” and we become more secure in God’s direction each time we take the unexpected turn down a promising dirt road.
I know my life would be very different if I had only stuck to the roads on the map I’d plotted. (For one thing, I’d be standing backstage in a broadway theater rolling my eyes at actors right now!) But it would be nowhere near as fulfilling. So much would have been lost had I stuck to my own plan, instead of following God’s turn-by-turn navigation.
Respond:
Christian Hope is built on the repeated telling of stories where God has shown up in the darkest hours throughout history. The stories we read from the Old and New Testaments are meant to help us find our grounding in God..
What is one time where God led you somewhere unexpected? What was that journey like? Where did you end up? What did you discover along the way?
Pray:
God of the journey - we want to be the captain of our own ships, setting our course and dictating each step of our lives. Help us to find joy in the adventure and peace in the unexpected. When we look back on the path of our lives, remind us of the many places the road turned in a different direction than we’d planned and show us the growth we experienced along the way. Amen.
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