Thought for Today
Judges 4:9 And she said, "I will surely go with you; nevertheless, the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for the LORD will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman." Then Deborah got up and went with Barak to Kedesh.
Isaiah 42:16 I will lead the blind by a road they do not know, by paths they have not known I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground. These are the things I will do, and I will not forsake them.
Matthew 2:12 And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
Matthew 7:13 "Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it.
I began to write earlier this morning, and then Greta and I had to leave for an appointment. By the time we returned, my mind was filled with thoughts of an entirely different subject. The nature of our appointment is not the relevant issue, but getting there was.
We did not have too far to drive. In Houston, I often drove a longer distance just to shop at a grocery store I preferred. Most of our drive today was on an interstate highway. However, we did drive to a town several miles away.
I have not seen a city or town street map in many years. Even state and national roadmaps are much less common than they were in my youth. When we take long car trips, I often stop at the first tourist information center after we cross a state border to (hopefully) get at least a state road map. The last time we checked, AAA did still plan out routes and provide a page-by-page map guide.
I know that any young person reading this will by now be completely puzzled about why driving and directions might be on my mind. Yes! Our car does have a GPS with a dashboard display. Yes! I do even know how to enter my destination and follow the maps on the display and listen to the turn-by-turn directions. But even more emphatically YES, even my annually updated GPS still occasionally directs me to roads and places that do not exist.
To further complicate things, here even when roads do continue from one town or city to another, they almost always change names. Sometimes here they even change names within a given town or city. In the Greater Houston area there are roads like Westheimer, Shephard Drive, and a few others that span distances, without a name change, that here would take me across 2 or 3 states!!
My rational brain keeps reminding me that I lived in Houston for more than 80% of my life. I learned to drive on those streets long before there even were interstate highways, or at least before they were completed in the area. Over that time, I also developed an ‘internal compass’ that always told me which way was north. Here, I still get confused before I clear the end of our driveway.
But, this morning’s experience obviously led me to thinking about the Bible. Not just because I prayed a lot as I tried to find where we were going. I did. But it also led me to thinking about the Bible as a road map. I’m not just thinking about the various geographic maps included at the back of many Bibles. Those sometimes do offer help in understanding a particular passage.
I’m not just thinking about the daunting task that faced Abram and Lot as they set out without a map to go from Harran to Canaan. Nor am I thinking about the Magi and their lack of a GPS. They at least had a guiding star.
The word map does not appear in any of the Bibles in my bookcases. It does appear in 1 translation on my software, the New International Version (NIV). But every translation of the Bible provides every reader with a detailed road map on how to get from where the reader is to where the reader wants to go. Jesus told us about the many dwelling places in his Father’s house. Jesus promised to come and take us to be with him. The Bible tells us how to get to the place where Jesus will meet us for our journey. The Bible is one global positioning system that will never direct us to streets that do not exist. “2 Timothy 3:6 All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,” and for providing trustworthy directions for our lives.
Stay safe, read your Bible, trust God,
Pastor Ray