Articles
Navigating Life
I navigated my way to work this morning. I used caution in backing out of my driveway, proceeded through my neighborhood at 30mph or less. I stopped at a stop sign with my turn signal on, and proceeded toward work. I passed more stop signs and several traffic lights on the way. I passed one way streets with DO NOT ENTER signs. I stayed between the lines of my lane, yielded to other traffic when I was supposed to, and they yielded to me. I applied the brakes when I needed to slow down, and accelerated when I needed to. I did a whole host of things, and never really gave any of them any thought, because they are just built into me after years of driving. My brain knows where on the road I need to drive, when to stop or slow and allow others to go first, when I'm supposed to go first, what the colors of the lights mean, what the speed limit is, and what I should do if I hear a siren or see flashing red and blue lights.
But I had to learn all of that, practice it, and do it repeatedly before all of that became second nature to me.
There are times we know we need to stop, but there is no stop sign or red light. There are times we know we need to slow down, but we aren't even going the speed limit. There are decisions that take place in our brains when we drive that we don't even have to consciously make, they just happen because we know the laws of nature with regards to speed and impact, and we know the rules of the road with regards to driving.
As we navigate life, hopefully we are the same way. We know right from wrong, we know when we are treading someplace unsafe or trying to drive the wrong way on a one way street. Like we have traffic laws to allow for all of us to drive safely, we have direction from God as to how to live. If everyone on the road just did what they wanted, I doubt I would have arrived at work this morning without an accident, or at least multiple near misses. It would have been total chaos on the roads.
We can't navigate life without laws either, and we can't navigate our spiritual lives without rules from God, and those should be second nature to us who are believers. Some things from God come with a huge 'DO NOT ENTER' sign, while some are more like the understanding of what centrifugal force is when we are driving in a curve. We should not have to grab the rule book every time we are faced with a situation, we should know what it says before hand, and be able to navigate by it all day every day.
God has one way streets too, and stop signs, and in our spiritual walk each day, we put into practice what we know and it balances out often times what comes at us unexpectedly. We don't veer off the road, because we know we need to slow down and use some extra caution at times, and our obedience to God should be second nature to us.
