Proverbs 3:5

"Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding."
Proverbs 3:5


I'm not sure that we always do it consciously, like saying "I totally know better than God does," but I do know that we often act like that.  We dismiss what he's asked us to do, we ignore his commandments and his advice, and we go our own way.  And sometimes, temporarily, it seems to work out.  But in the end, any other way stops in a dead end, or leads someplace that we find out that we never, ever wanted to go.  We end up worse off than we were, and it is sometimes really hard to find our way back to that original turnoff, so that we can continue following the good directions from there.  It's like a road trip where you need to stay on the path to get to where you are going, and for some reason you get distracted by the "World's Largest Ball of Yarn" sign, and end up turning off, going miles out of your way, and then staying there, admiring the yarn for months.  You have to get a job at the local diner to support your yarn habit, but you don't care because you are totally infatuated, wondering if you could add to it or crochet it into something.  One day you wake up in this dirty little motel room with a cockroach staring you in the face and you suddenly realize that if you actually finish your interrupted journey, you wouldn't have to deal with cockroaches.  You were invited to a mansion, after all.  It just seems so far, and you are already here...
Although I know today it probably won't be the world's largest ball of yarn that is fighting for our attention, let's be on alert for the yarn-like distractions in our lives.  God's destination is so much better than the little podunk turnoffs that we choose for ourselves.  Even if we've driven so far that we've run out of gas or the car has broken down, or we're lost beyond hope of a map or a GPS signal... God will still be able to help us find our way back to the straight and narrow road, and towards our destination... if we will only listen to him and realize that we really don't know where we're going.  It takes some humility to admit that and to ask for directions, but today, let's do it anyway.  Let's ask God to help us find our way to him.  It's definitely not always easy... but God's house is always a better destination than Yarntown.  Promise.