"A Right Turn Equals a U-Turn"

While I was driving recently, I took a wrong turn and got lost. I did not have my GPS nor did I have a Bluetooth, so calling anyone was out of the question. I made a couple of other turns to get back on track, but could not find my way. At the tipping point of my exasperation, I noticed that the more lost I became…the faster I drove. I looked at my speedometer and asked myself “Why am I trying to get to nowhere so fast?”

Do you ever feel as if we go through life this way? We forget where we are going, but we want to hurry to get there. We become more frantic and more confused, and then we become more tired because we exert all of our energy to find our way. The best thing to do when we are lost—in life or on the road—is to stop and analyze where we are and what we are doing. Otherwise we are just going deeper down a road that we probably should not be on in the first place.

Paul, while sitting in a jail cell, could easily have become frantic, unfocused, and angry as he wrote to his churches who were supposed to embody the gospel that he preached. Paul’s mind could have been directed toward any number of things that would have led him down some pretty negative roads. But they didn’t. In fact, Paul thought that when we didn’t know how we were going to make it to our destination, we should probably just concentrate on what we did know.

“Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things”
(Philippians 4:8)

Sometimes we focus so much on making a deadline or reaching a destination that we forget how we are supposed to get there. It is not enough to assume a path and speed off into that direction. Sometimes we might need to be clear on how we are going to get there before we depart. The next time we lose our way, maybe we should just pull over and “think about” where we are going. It might be as simple as making a U-Turn.

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