GPS Navigation for Change?
I sometimes wish that change came with a GPS Navigation device. I’m looking ahead at the next size months knowing that my life will drastically change. Most of the time this genuinely excites me and the change in the air invigorates me to embrace whatever is next: a new son, job challenges, and great opportunities on the horizon. Yet every so often I have this freak out moment where I either lose my focus or my trust or some other bit of sanity.
Questions ranging from will I really be able to be a good father to a boy from Ethiopia? How are we going to afford him? to Am I really the one that can bring our elementary children’s programming to that 3.0 edition? What does Discovery Village 3.0 even look like?!
I’m on a path where change is going to happen. I can’t, nor should I, stop it. I would love to have the destination clear in my sites, or at least have a dot on a map with a soothing voice giving me turn by turn direction. But I don’t and I won’t. I know there is a destination; I wish I knew the route I’m taking to get there – the turns, the forks in the road and the moments of decisions. I wish I knew the attractions awaiting me at my destination and how I will interact with them. I’d love to have the ability to make out the details through the fog.
Yet even as I wrote those word, I realize that I can’t complain; along the journey so far I’ve seen such great sites. I’ve seen God preparing my heart to welcome my son with open arms. I’ve felt his provision for this adoption through the support of our community both face-to-face and on-line. I’ve seen amazing God-moments at the church in the lives of kids and families coming to a greater sense of what life with Jesus is all about, really great moments.
I wonder if God doesn’t always give a clear final picture of what change will actually look like because we’d miss the beauty of the journey along the way. Maybe if all we’re waiting for is the next set of directions we’d miss the fact that we NEED to see the sites along the side of the road. It’s in the journey that we learn to trust; because it’s in the journey we see the hand of God carrying us to our destination.
GPS Navigation or not, I will trust knowing that the destination other side of change will be better for having simply traveled the road to the change in the first place.
To stretch the simile a bit, I think God is very much like GPS. He knows the final destination, but only gives instructions for the next step. When we (especially me) decide to take a different path, he patiently recalculates the path to get us back on course. So while you can foul up the next step, the destination remains constant.
Inject insulin now.