A couple of weeks ago, a few of the girls in my small group and I decided that we were going to do The Color Run in September. Once we had signed up for it, one of my girls and I decided to start our training by going "running" — which is really run/walking — at a lake/park nearby.
There's a trail around the lake that is approximately 4 miles. We figured this would be perfect because, if we could run the full 4 miles by the time The Color Run comes around, we should have no problem running the 5k, as that's only a little over 3 miles. So I picked Holly up and we headed out to the trail to begin our preparation for this colorful race.
I've been to this particular lake many times as a kid. We used to go there as a family and play mini golf, ride the carousel, and take the paddle boats out to the center of the lake and feed the ducks. But I can't say I've ever walked or run the trail there.
The run started off fairly well. We walked for a bit to warm up our muscles and then did intervals where we'd run for a couple of minutes and walk for a couple of minutes. All was going fairly well, but the thing we didn't count on was forks in the trail. A lot of forks in the trail. Eventually we found ourselves at a neighborhood and a major road. We thought we must've taken a wrong turn, so we turned around and headed back in the other direction.
After a while, we stopped with the intervals and just walked and it soon became apparent that we had no idea where we were. We found a bunch of power lines, a baseball field, some random fields, a major road near I-495 all in our quest to get back on the right trail and eventually make our way around to the other side of the lake. Finally, we gave up. We had no idea where we were or how to get to the other side of the lake, so we simply turned around and walked back in the direction we came and eventually made it back to the parking lot.
The entire somewhat-unplanned-adventurous excursion took us about two hours. I was incredibly sore for the next couple of days and Holly and I resolved to make sure we didn't get lost the next time we ran the trail.
The funny thing is, one little thing would've solved all of our problems. Rather than doing the logical thing and looking at a map before we went on our run, we just set off in the general direction we knew we had to go.
Now for some people this works wonderfully. They don't have a specific destination in mind and they're just in the mood for an adventure, but we had a specific destination and a specific purpose in mind that we failed to accomplish because we neglected to look at a map. (Looking at the map later revealed that when we got to the neighborhood, we were going in the right direction. The trail went through a neighborhood for a brief bit of time.)
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As I reflected on our excursion, I thought about how often this kind of thing happens in my spiritual life and life in general.
It's a generally proven fact that if you have somewhere you want to go, you should use a map to tell you how to get there. Of course you could stumble upon your desired destination without the use of a map, but you're far more likely to get to where you want to go if you use the tools that you've been given.
In the case of life, we were given a map, so to speak. God provided us with His word that gives us a "map" of how to live our lives. We know the general eventual destination (heaven) and while we may not know the specific twists and turns of the road, we know that if we pay attention to the instructions in His word, then we will get there, we will glorify Him, and we will live abundant lives.
The problem is, a lot of times we take the approach Holly and I took on our run. We might glance at the map (which I had, when determining how far we would be running/walking), but then we put it aside and forget about it. We don't study it extensively to know what to do when we come upon a fork, a turn, or an unexpected neighborhood. And so we find ourselves wandering through life without the slightest clue about where we're going and where we're going to end up.
I'm notorious amongst my friends and family for having a horrible sense of direction. I often joke that whoever I marry better have at least a decent sense of direction of we're going to spend half of our marriage lost.
You could argue that getting lost on occasion is a good thing, and it can be. Holly and I got a great story out of our little running adventure and the times that I've gotten lost both geographically and spiritually have taught me wonderful things that I probably never would've learned if I'd stayed on the right path the entire time.
I suppose my point here is that we've been given an amazing gift in God's word.
Rather than having us wander aimlessly through life hoping that we'd guess the right way to live and eventually end up in heaven, He gave us the tools we need. We will invariably make mistakes and occasionally choose the wrong fork in the road. We will stumble down some side paths, end up at baseball fields when we want to be on the trail, trip on a rock, and occasionally fall down a hill because we took a wrong step to the side. But God graciously waits for us to realize we made a mistake, turn around, and continue down the right path...or He meets us at the bottom of the hill and holds our hand while we walk back up.
But in His great love and His great mercy, He showed us the way we need to go. We might not always see the end. We might come to a neighborhood on occasion and go, "Wait...is this really the way I'm supposed to go?" But when we keep ourselves steeped in the word and close to the heart of the Father, He will tell us where we need to go and He will guide us on the path of righteousness to life everlasting. When we focus our lives and hearts on Him, He will keep us on the straight and narrow so we don't get lost along the way.
What is it that you find distracts you from your destination? What causes you to put the map down and leads you down the paths that don't take you in the direction you want to go?
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The post Lost Along the Way appeared first on Shades of Shayes.
