How are you at following directions? Today, I tried out some different recipes! I mostly followed the directions. I intended to! But when I was done constructing and had what I had created in the oven, when I checked to see how they were baking, and then I thought—something doesn't look right. It was then that I realized that I left out an important ingredient—there was nothing in what I put in the oven to bake to make the quick bread rise to be the light loaf of the quick bread it was supposed to be! Opps! The smallest thing can change the outcome of what you intended.
When you assume you know where you are going on a road trip but you assume that somehow you will arrive at your destination with no need to look at a map, you can quickly go astray and end up in an entirely different location—a very unintended location.
There was once an old man who almost every morning would go walking with his dog who was happy to accompany him, usually before the sun came up. One early cold morning, the old man suddenly decided to change their walking route. Not too far on their walk, they came to a deep gully, with a steep drop off of hundreds of feet to the base of the long gully. The land on the other side was sort of flat and level, but not on the man's side. The road went by the gully before ending up in another flat area with a few fields on each side of the cut. The road was no longer maintained regularly since there were no occupied homes along it and very little traffic. It was mostly a place to have a bit of fun with 4-wheel drive trucks after rainstorms. The ruts rarely were levelled off. And the road was steep and had many boulders close to narrow places.
The old man thought that it would be a good workout to walk to the bottom and back up again. As the sky was beginning to lighten, he and his dog started their trek. He had a cell phone but discovered there was no service! The dog did dog things and was hunting both sides of the road and got far ahead of the old man. Walking wasn't too much of a problem—downhill! Nearing the bottom of the cut, the dog was barking ahead—perhaps at a cornered wild animal? And then around a curve near the bottom and off the road, he spotted what appeared to be a vehicle of some sort about 100 feet off the road. And then he could see a pickup had smashed head on into a boulder. Was it a new or old wreck? He discovered that the driver's window was broken out and there was a person in the driver's seat and someone on the passenger side. They were covered in blood, and they weren't responsive. Though the man had seen TV shows of accidents, he wasn't sure how to proceed. Checking for pulses seemed important and he could see the driver was breathing shallowly but unconscious and the steering wheel had caused damage to his chest. On the opposite side, the window was up, and the door wouldn't open. He found a piece of rock and carefully broke the window. The girl was unconscious and seemed to be trapped by the crushed front end of the truck.
It was clear to him that there was little he could do to help them. It was a mile and a half walk to the nearest good road or half a mile up to the top where he lived.
So up the hill he went but he was not a young man. Running up the hill was not an option but he walked as fast as he could until he had to stop to catch his breath. This was to happen repeatedly on the half mile uphill march. Finally reaching the top, he checked his cell phone—still no service. Nearly 100 yards from his house the phone began to work and he called 911 to explain what had happened. At his shop, he picked up some chains and rope and his UTV and went back to the bottom of the gully. He checked on the 2 and found them still alive. He began to try to figure out how to get them out of their truck but then began to hear sirens coming towards him. Jaws of life were used and the two injured people were on their way to the hospital.
Somedays we start out thinking that today will be like yesterday. But that day the old man made a decision that changed everything. Choosing to walk a different route put him in a position to perhaps save the lives of two young people. He was sure that there were days when no one went up and down that road. Perhaps that young couple could have been stuck there until it would have been way too late to save them. The old man was grateful that he was able to get to the top to do the good which needed to be done. And wondered what the next day would bring? When we follow God's direction, he often leads us on surprising journeys just as this old man experienced. It is up to us to choose to let God lead. God often leads us to do what we don't want to do—to give a Bible study, to do a good deed that you know is going to take time from your busy schedule, to offer to teach a Sabbath School class even though you will know you are petrified.......
Sometimes we can look back and later realize "Oh my, that was God leading me to do......to do something that I hadn't planned to do at all. And He made it turn out to be good!" God guides people to take actions or experience situations that they wouldn't normally anticipate or plan for, requiring trust in His greater plan even when it seems surprising or unconventional; essentially, God's ways may not always align with our expectations, but we can rely on His wisdom to lead us in the right direction, even if it seems unexpected. When things happen that we do not understand, remember 1 Corinthians 13:12 – "Now we see imperfectly, but then we will see clearly." We don't understand now why the unexpected happens. But we will, in the future, see how God uses all the events in our lives to weave our lives together. Today was filled with accidental happenings—things went wrong over and over again. I spilled something that should not have been spilled and that made me have to clean up the mess that was a bad mess and some of the bad mess landed on things that had to be cleaned and washed and dried and I had to mop up the floor and that made me bend over more than my new hip liked for me to do. While I was cleaning up the bad mess, I forgot that I had a burner on and I burned the cranberries. Then I had a burned pan mess to clean up! Then later I left out the ingredient from the recipe I want to make for Sabbath morning breakfast and that made me waste some expensive ingredients. And while I was having my troubles, husband Garry was having his own messes. Things fell for him, and he had to pick things up numerous times—he was not happy about his messes. Then he discovered he needed a part for our woodstove that he couldn't replace on a holiday that causes stores to be closed. NO! We did not have a very good day. Should we blame our troubled bumpy road that we have been on that was leading us to a deep gully of trouble, on the idea that God leads us down a road we don't expect or plan for? We must remember that we need to turn our day over to God and let him lead. Sometimes we choose to ignore the gentle nudges God gives us to direct us the way He wants for us. We choose to go our own way. I was nudged to fix the problem that was eventually going to cause my big mess! I choose to ignore the nudge! I had no one to blame but myself for the big mess I had to take time out of my busy day to clean up.
We all can think of things that have happened that we didn't like but when we think about them, we realize that God had nudged us to the way that would have been better. We all choose our own destruction and can only blame ourselves.
Because of who God is, we can expect God in the unexpected. We can trust that God will meet us in the hurt and turn it around for His glory. We can trust that He has already gone before us in restoring what is broken and has a future for us better than anything we could dream for ourselves. Here are a few Bible promises that give us hope that there are better ways.
Jeremiah 33:3 (AMP) 'Call to Me and I will answer you, and tell you [and even show you] great and mighty things, [things which have been confined and hidden], which you do not know and understand and cannot distinguish. '
Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us.” — Ephesians 3:20. And in Deuteronomy 31:8 ERV The LORD will lead you. He himself is with you. He will not fail you or leave you.
Proverbs 19:21 Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand. or You can make many plans, but the LORD 's purpose will prevail.
Psalm 32:8 says, “I will lead you down the best path for your life.” God has the wisdom, guidance and direction we need, but it's not going to happen automatically. There's something we have to do. Every morning, we have to ask God to show us our assignment for the day.
God wants to surprise us. He wants to satisfy our deepest desires and amaze us with His goodness. He wants to do this in big and small ways. He wants to surprise us with financial provision, solutions to relational and health problems, and advancement in our goals and dreams. Isaiah 55:9 NIV “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
I love to think about these promises. They give me hope that there is a better way! But I have to choose it!
God's Plans never fail!