Grace Community Christian Church

 

Archived Things Above

U-Turn Moments (7/1/93)

U-Turn moments can be very humiliating.

The directions were explicit: "Go past the prison on the hill, then turn left at the yellow blinking light." We were on the way to my step-sister's house outside of Portland, Maine, and the light before me was blinking red, not yellow. To turn, or not to turn? Unbeknownst to us, we were about to encounter the most severe of our holidays' travel crises!

My wife,Kim, of course, took the logical approach: "The directions have been perfect up to here, so why bother assuming a mistake now? She said YELLOW, so this is obviously NOT where she intended you to turn."

I, on the other hand, trusting more in my instincts than in the person who had lived several years in the area, thought otherwise. After all, what was the likelihood of there being TWO blinking lights, on the same road, within miles of each other, each a different color? Highly unlikely, I lectured, as we turned left.

The U-Turn came several miles later, as it became painfully obvious that when Polly said yellow, she meant yellow. Unfortunately for me, Kim was in a mood to gloat, & now it was my turn to be on the receiving end of a (muchly deserved) lecture on the simplicity & necessity of following directions.

I had been guilty of doing to Polly's directions what many do to God's directions revealed in the Bible: override them for no other purpose than that they think they know better. God doesn't ask that we understand or even approve of His directions; He simply asks that we by faith show our love to Him by obeying them.

U-Turn moments may be humiliating, but if you want to get where you're going, sometimes they're a necessity.


Jim Dewar --