God and GPS (Is this really the right way to go?)

 I have a love-hate relationship with my GPS.

Maybe you do, too.

I realized this while driving a friend’s car from Birmingham to Minneapolis, about a 15-hour drive which I broke up over two days. (The reason for the drive is another story, for another time).

I suppose it’s a cliché about men, that we don’t like to ask for directions. Because I have family in St. Louis, I know the various routes to get there from Birmingham. But even though I have made this drive to Minnesota three years in a row, I’m still not entirely confident in knowing the best way to get from St. Louis to Minneapolis.

However, I have made the drive enough to be somewhat familiar with the roads and landmarks along the way. So, I plugged in the address to my GPS, hit “start” and was following the directions just fine until …

Until I started to second-guess the GPS. As I said, I had made this drive twice before and recognized enough landmarks that were familiar, and so I had those moments in which I thought, “I wonder if the GPS is really on the best route.”

Again, maybe it’s a guy thing. Or maybe just me. My wife laughs at how I argue with the GPS just driving around town. I admit I’m a bit of a Luddite – someone who resists technology – and identify with John Henry in his ultimately futile fight against the steam-powered hammer.

The system I used for this trip is on my phone. But what I like and dislike about this particular system is often the same thing: communication.

Sometimes my GPS gives me random but very useful information, letting me know an accident had been reported ahead, or one lane is closing due to construction, or even there is a reported speed trap ahead; not to mention the usual “take the next exit” or “at the next traffic light, turn left.”

But then sometimes it goes silent. I’ll be driving along, passing exits, and nothing comes from my GPS system. Sometimes it goes on for so long that I begin to wonder if it has somehow disconnected. I check to make sure the system is on and I haven’t somehow lost the signal. Usually, it’s during a particularly long stretch of staying on the same highway.

Sometimes it talks to me almost too much, which becomes annoying, particularly offering instructions about what not to do, when I wasn’t even considering making that turn or following another highway.

Then sometimes it doesn’t talk to me enough. It doesn’t give me enough acknowledgement that I’m on the right road, doing a good job. A simple “attaboy” just to let me know it’s still there and knows what I’m doing would be appreciated.

But ultimately sometimes it tells me to go in one direction when I wonder if this other direction wouldn’t make more sense. It tells me to go straight when something makes me think turning on another road seems like the right way to go.

And it struck me that’s kind of like my relationship with God.

Sometimes I’d like a little more confirmation from God about what I’m doing, what road I’m taking in my life. Sometimes I feel like I’m hearing from God enough to feel I’m right where He wants me.

Then sometimes I’m cruising along and suddenly feel like I haven’t heard from Him in a while, and I wonder if He’s still there. I wonder if He’s paying attention.

And then there are the times I wonder if I don’t know better what to do in a given situation.

Remember when God told Abraham, at the advanced age of 75 (and his wife Sarah was 65), that Abraham was going to have a son and be the father of a great nation? Abraham believed. But then nothing happened. God, as far as we know, went silent, like my GPS on a long stretch of Iowa state highway. And Abraham and Sarah decided that maybe God needed some help.

First, they decided that Abraham’s servant, Eliezer of Damascus, would be the heir. Then they decided to produce a son by Sarah’s slave, Hagar. It was like saying, “I know where we’re trying to get to, God, but I think this route would be faster.”

The result was worse than simply a wrong turn that cost time on an already long trip - particularly in the son conceived through Hagar. Abraham and Sarah’s idea produced Ishmael, whose descendants are the reason for so much of the conflict in the Middle East today. “He will live in hostility toward all his brothers,” is how the story goes. And so he has.

After 25 years, God did what He said He would do: Sarah conceived a son by Abraham. Abraham was 99. If Abraham had only believed and been patient, he’d have saved himself – and the world – a lot of trouble.

That’s a lot more serious than doubting my GPS, I know. And it’s a lot easier to correct the mistakes I make by sometimes deciding I know better than by GPS which way to go.

If only I could trust, and be patient, and wait … on my GPS, and on God.

But sometimes I just can’t help but think that maybe God needs some help, or maybe God is expecting me to do something about my situation, or maybe God just doesn’t really understand what’s going on.

It reminds me of the story of the guy who was out hiking in the mountains. He slips, and goes over a steep cliff, but about 20 feet down he manages to grab a bush that is sticking out of the side of the cliff face.

He’s hanging there, looking up at the top with no idea of how to get back there, and looking down at the bottom, some 75 feet to rocks and certain death.

So finally, he calls out, “Is anybody up there? Can somebody save me? Hello! Anybody there? Somebody – anybody – help!”

And he hears a voice. “Yes. This is God. Trust me. Let go of the bush and I’ll save you.”

The man looks down at the rock far below. He considers where he is. He calls out, “Do you understand where I am right now? Are you sure about this?”

God says, “Just trust me.”

The man thinks for a minute, looks down at the rock below, and then says, “Hey - is there anybody else up there?”

Sometimes, like the GPS says, we all have to recalibrate.