The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you.”
I travel often and am continually looking at a road map to determine which direction to drive next. Consideration needs to be made for how long it will take to get to the destination, what to do while I am there, and what the weather will be like. Recently, when planning a trip to visit friends, I received an email from them asking if a proposed itinerary for our visit was acceptable or too presumptive. My response? A resounding, “it is awesome”! It was such a relief to know I didn’t need to worry about what the path for this trip would be.
Unlike myself, you may not do much traveling and have no need to establish a road map, but you still set a direction in your life journey. The reality is that our life’s direction is not led by a road map or an itinerary, but by God. If we do not acknowledge or seek His direction, we may find we have taken a wrong turn. Sometimes it is by choice, thinking we know better, or sometimes it is because we are not patient in waiting for God’s answer.
Abraham is a great example of a life journey led by God. One day God told Abraham: “pack up your family and move to a land I have prepared for you.” The Bible doesn’t state how Abraham felt in that moment, but from a human perspective it must have been unsettling to follow that command. He had to leave the city he knew, uproot his family, and didn’t have any direction on where he was going until God told him. But Abraham listened and obeyed. There are many stories like Abraham’s in the Bible.
Our story is similar; we want to know what our next step will be. Oftentimes we don’t get an immediate answer but rather a lifetime of directions. The only certainty we have is that He has called us to be His representatives while we travel our life journey. While we wait we have the opportunity to demonstrate His love and embrace the value He places in each moment of our life. When we do that we will find the road we mapped out isn’t as important as we once thought, and our current path is enough.
