Hi, this is Pastor Ken, I want to welcome you to my Thoughts on a Thursday Podcast where I take some regular occurrence or personal story from my life and connect it to a scriptural truth. So here are my thoughts on this Thursday, October 19th 2023…Planning the Route
Planning a route for a trip has changed considerably in my lifetime. When I was a kid it meant spreading state maps out across the kitchen table and switching from one to another as needed to plan a journey into unfamiliar territory. Some people had trouble reading those maps, I’ve even known some who seemingly didn’t know which side was the top of the map. Regardless of your ability to read those free maps provided by the local gas station, everyone had problems refolding them back to their original size and shape.
As I got just a little older Rand McNally began printing automobile atlas books that included each of the 50 United States and some incorporated all of North America. That book made the phone book look small, but I remember happily perusing through my parent’s Atlas in the back seat trying to identify all of the places on the various pages we had visited. Even as a young boy I thought those books were a vast improvement over the old “gas station” state maps. It was like possessing all of them without having to travel to each state to collect them and…you didn’t have to fold it up correctly when you were finished with it. That fact alone made it a vast improvement!
In my early twenties, AAA came out with “Trip-tics”. If you were a member, and you made your local AAA agent aware of where you were going, they would print out 4x8 inch pages cropped from a full size map with a highlighted line that followed the best route from point A to point B. All you had to do once you had traversed the road depicted on the current page of the trip-tic was flip it over to the next page and begin recording your progress there.
In my thirties Garmin and Tom-Tom were released. This was cutting edge technology for sure. Inputting your destination and simply following the directions of the insistent and sometimes downright rude voice that emanated from the device’s speaker made traveling much easier. Anyone could successfully navigate with one of those devises. You didn’t need to be able to read a map at all, and no preplanning was necessary…except being ready to mute the indignant gizmo when you wanted to stop for something to eat, gas up or simply use a rest-room. This was necessary to avoid it incessantly shouting, “Recalculating!. Recalculating!!” as if you would not have the good sense to know how to get back to the prescribed route again.
Then Cell Phones grew a brain and became “Smart Phones”. With one of those, Google offers all of us its Maps app, and you can get the turn-by-turn instructions without all of the preprogramed hype if a recalculation of the route becomes necessary. The Maps app can calculate the time to destination including heavy traffic slowdowns, weather conditions, and will offer detours around accidents miles before you inadvertently find yourself sitting in a traffic jam. Other Apps like Waze will do all that and tell you where the police are staked out behind that road sign trying to catch those ignoring the speed limit.
Last week I used an App on my phone that let me do something we haven’t done much of since folding “gas station maps” and Atlas books. I planned my own trip. That app allowed me to choose each and every road and turn. It kept track of the distance and calculated the time it would take, but I got to choose the route. When I took that trip, it guided me turn-by-turn, but it did so in accordance with my wishes. Planning a journey sure has changed a lot over the years.
Whether I made the plan or it was made for me, the success of the journey has everything to do with my ability to obey the instructions given and keep the course. My walk with the Lord is a lot like that. My success has much to do with my response to God. His word says that He is always there to guide me, but whether I conform to His will or not…therein lies my success or lack of success navigating life. Psalm 16:4 says; You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. I don’t take this to mean that there are no difficulties that will cross my path if I let God decide the route. What I do understand, is that God has rightly decided that it is His place to set the path for me, it is my position to follow as He makes that path evident, and He says He will do just that. It also means that in His presence, in other words walking that path with Him by my side I can have joy regardless of the perils, and the peace that comes from His company, provision and protection along the way.
So what about those times when it seems that the path is full of obstacles and trouble? Sometimes it indeed appears that life is out of control. From our limited ability to see what is ahea