Where the Road Ends

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.  (2 Chronicles 7:14)

There are some people who get lost while driving and calmly navigate their way back to familiar territory while taking the time to enjoy the unexpected view.  I’m not one of those people.  I fall into the panicked, sick-to-my-stomach group of folks for whom being lost (especially while alone) is all but intolerable.  Even with the benefit of GPS, all I can think about is finding familiar ground, and when I do, the sense of relief is tangible.

It’s easy to recognize when we lose our way on the road, but it’s not always so easy to recognize when we’ve lost our way in life.  It tends to happen more slowly in life, one poor decision and circumstance at a time.  Things snowball and before we know it, we’re miserable and we can’t seem to figure out why.

There are two women with whom I once shared a wonderful friendship, but a couple of years ago, I destroyed that friendship by choosing to engage in hateful gossip about them that had nothing to do with me, and which made a difficult situation for them much worse.  I felt completely justified in my sinfulness at the time, not recognizing how lost I was.  I prayed about it, and thankfully, God reminded me that my internal compass was stuck.  The GPS of my soul kept saying in that disappointing, nasally voice, “recalculating route,” until I finally oriented myself in the right direction.  I reached out to these two women, sincerely apologized, and showed them some long-overdue compassion.  It was difficult and awkward, but it was needed.  They responded more graciously than I could have hoped, and one of the women just last weekend emailed me to say she is sleeping better now that she has in years.  Praise God.

When it came to my salvation and my faith in Christ, God relentlessly pursued me until I finally stopped running.  And still today, He pursues me whenever I errantly choose to run circles around His love, rather than living in it.  The key is in learning not to run.  When someone runs from the police in crime shows on TV, it means he has something to hide.  It also means he’s making life much more difficult for himself that it needs to be.  The same applies to our relationship with God.  If we feel the need to run from Him for any reason, then it means our compass is pointing us in the wrong direction.

There are many detours and adventures on the road of life.  Sometimes it’s smooth sailing, sometimes we hit some potholes, and sometimes we choose to ignore warning signs meant to guide and protect us.  No matter what road you’re on right now, just remember one thing: there are no dead-ends with God.  We are never truly lost if we remember that all roads lead back to Him.