Sweetwater Presbyterian

Small in size, Large in Faith and Love

Devotion September 20, 2017

Greetings!!

I just spent the morning driving around Charlotte, NC. Now for many of you that may not seem like such a big deal, but for this growing up in small town West Virginia girl and living a large chunk of my life in rural WV girl, driving in Charlotte, a really large city, is quite the challenge.
Understand that most of my life I was in areas that were mostly 2 lane roads and sometimes just wide one lane roads that admittedly took a bit of spunk and bravery to drive on because often you couldn’t see around corners or over hills and you just took a deep breath and hoped that there wasn’t a car coming the other direction because there truly were only inches to spare if another car needed to go the other way while you were going your way…..
And on these one or two lane roads in these sparsely populated areas there weren’t a lot of cars anyway so rarely did you have to deal with cars whizzing by you on either side or especially with cars that darted in and out from behind you to beside you to in front of you in a matter of seconds - or bumper to bumper cars going a million miles per hour when you were trying to go the speed limit because that is what you were suppose to do but realize in these big cities the speed limit is obviously a minimum rather than a maximum.....
There are other challenges with driving in Charlotte that do not come naturally to this country road driving girl which include the problem of which of the 4 lanes do I need to be in when I reach that stoplight because if I am in the wrong one I will not be going to where I need to go and there are way too many cars to change your mind; or the dreaded traffic circles which probably are the most confusing things that I have ever encountered as there are cars driving around in circles and cars going part of the circle and darting another direction and cars coming into the circle from all different directions and it is extremely confusing to figure out what to do - and then there are the ‘you have to make a u-turn to get where you need to go’ roads where the turn is into oncoming traffic that never seems to have an opening for you to jump out into and you really don’t know what to do while the traffic behind you made up of cars who also have to make the dreaded u-turn are also now frustrated because there is no break in the oncoming traffic and for some reason it is your fault because you are the lead car…..
Then there is the challenge of not having any idea of where one is going in Charlotte. I know where I am and I know where I need to go but getting from point A to point B is problematic - especially with a car whose GPS has never been updated and there are a zillion (minimum) new roads in this section of Charlotte and the poor lady (it is really just a voice generated by the GPS but you just come to think of her as a real person) in the GPS gets rather frustrated as you sit at an intersection where she is telling you to go pondering the fact that there is no longer a road there, or the road there is now one way. And even better yet when the GPS lady starts to yell at me because I am driving on a road that she doesn’t think exists (Notice how I treat this GPS voice as if it were a real person….)
This morning as my granddaughter (who is 2 1/2 and therefore has no clue where we are going and can be of no help except when she reaches the destination because she knows “Mommy’s Church” or “Walmart” or “My house”) and I needed to run some errands for my daughter who is in the hospital giving birth to my granddaughters new baby brother (she is in for such a shock when this new little intruder enters ‘her’ home!) and the errands required going to various locations in Charlotte. Fortunately I had addresses for the locations and I crossed my fingers that my GPS lady had a good idea where these addresses might actually be.
And I admit for an old GPS with the new roads in this area she didn’t do too bad. She did try and take me to the place where the Walmart use to be but fortunately I could see where the new Walmart was; and she tried to take me down some weird road to get to the church but again I could see the sign for the church down the street and I was able to get there as well…
But it was the coming home that proved to be a little tricky. I left the last destination on my errand running journey and punched in the address of my daughter’s home and and my GPS lady said she was preparing the map and I should proceed to the highlighted route and so I did.
She actually found where I was and had me turn right and we were off where I trusted was the proper way to go in order to get to my daughter’s house.
All seemed to be going as it should until my GPS lady told me to turn into this neighborhood that was not my daughter’s neighborhood… but I was afraid that if I didn’t go the way GPS lady told me to go I would get really lost and end up somewhere I didn’t want to be and so I turned where GPS lady told me to turn.
Through this neighborhood I went - and I admit it was a very nice neighborhood with some very pretty flowers so the trip was enjoyable even though I didn't understand why I was going through these streets - turning left and right and right and left and crisscrossing by these carefully maintained homes - and I admit I was becoming a little concerned that my unupdated GPS was thinking it was somewhere it was not when lo and behold I ended up on the proper road that would take me to the neighborhood in which I needed to be to get home.
It may have been a circuitous route but it did get me where I needed to be! But the whole time I was traversing through this twisty turny routeI was wondering....
Sometimes in our journey with God we start to think that he might be a GPS lady who doesn’t know the new roads. We think we know which way we want to go or even the way we think we should go and God begins to lead us here and there and around and right and left turns through wondering roads and the whole time we are wondering if God even knows where he wants us to end up. So we worry and agonize over where this journey is taking us and lo and behold we eventually find ourselves right where we need to be! Imagine that!
So if you are willing to listen to God’s direction, know that the road may not be straight or level or smooth or even make sense, but it is the exact road where we need to be!
Amen!


These devotions began in 2006 as a way to give us a midweek boost as we live out our lives as the people of God! Feel free to share them if you wish.