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Natural Navigators

by Jerry Ousley  
7/14/2007 / Christian Living

Why do we men insist that our way is the best? We had planned a trip recently and as usual I had it all figured out. We had to wait until Saturday afternoon to leave which really made me pace the floor. You see I don't wait very well when it comes to taking a trip. When its time to go its time to go you know? But our daughter, Megan was scheduled to work Saturday morning and then she had to play with the school band at a ballgame at 1:00 PM. That meant that we had to wait until around 4:00 PM to leave.

Okay I knew that this was part of the equation. The problem was that a snowstorm was moving into the area. I was sure that if we could leave early enough we could get ahead of it and arrive at our destination without difficulty. But the system hit our area early and as the white flakes drifted to earth, sometimes gently and sometimes in a blinding fury, I became more nervous by the minute. If only she hadn't have had to go to that game! But she did.

Deb suggested, "Why don't we just go part of the way and get a room for the night. Then we can get up and take our time going in on Sunday." I became irritated because well, that just hadn't been part of the plan. I don't like it when things don't go according to the plan. So I insisted that we go the full distance. I was sure that as we traveled farther south that we would eventually drive out of the snow and things would get better. I reasoned that it would be much more relaxing waking up at our destination rather than having to get up and drive some more.

But as time wore on I realized that she was right. I had to apologize to her and so we called the motel where we had reservations and told them that we probably wouldn't arrive that night but sometime the next day.

Megan finally got home; we finished packing, loaded the car and headed out. It was obvious that the farther south we went the worse the snow got. Soon it was dark and driving conditions began getting worse. I knew more than ever that Deb had been right and I was extremely grateful that she had made the suggestion of stopping early. We did, had a good meal, a good night's rest and by the next morning the roads had melted and travel was much more relaxed. We had a great time. Had we followed my intended plans we may have wound up spending the night getting our car out of the ditch or worse in the hospital. That would not have been a great time.

Life is like that. We plan and have it all figured out or so we think. Life's maps are spread across the table and our route is marked. We know the steps that must be taken to keep on course and we determine that we are going to take them no matter what.

But then the unexpected happens and things change. Very seldom do things go exactly as planned in life. We just can't see that far down the road. Situations change, health fails, others let us down, and we have to change something in life's plan. It happens to all of us.

The good thing is that if we will recognize the fact that God is always with us then we can know that He is the One who changes plans. He directs our paths and if we listen to him and stop early instead of pressing on in our own stubborn self-determination we just may see His hand working to spare us some greater difficulty down the way. He does that you know. It may make us angry because things didn't go according to plan. But if we knew the greater difficulty that He has spared us from, well we'd probably not be so grumpy about it.

Trust in Christ today because you might just find yourself in a life situation that requires you to stop early. When we do it's certainly good to know that we have a Master Navigator that is much better at it than we are.

Jerry D. Ousley is the author of ?Soul Challenge?, ?Soul Journey?, ?Ordeal?, ?The Spirit Bread Daily Devotional and his first novel ?The Shoe Tree.? Visit our website at spiritbread.com to download these and more completely free of charge.

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