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The Right Road

         Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. (Psalm 139:7-12)

 

            For years before GPSes existed, I told people I wanted something in my car that would tell me, “Turn left in half a mile…turn left in a quarter mile…turn left in 500 feet… turn left in 100 feet…turn left now…You missed the turn, Dummy!” The problem isn’t necessarily that I get lost so much as I’m afraid I’ll get lost. I don’t want to have to spend my whole trip stressing over the next turn. I have the same problem with my spiritual journey.

            God and I have discussed this, and I’ve told the story. I know that He won’t let me miss my next turn, but that doesn’t stop me from looking around anxiously and failing to recognize any landmarks to tell me whether I’m on the right road or which of the thousands of roads in the next half a mile I’m supposed to take.

            Today’s passage deals with God’s omnipresence in terms of our trying to escape from Him. There’s nowhere we can go that He is not there. But if there’s no way to escape Him, there’s also no way to lose Him or be lost by Him. And since He can’t get lost, even if we go somewhere we shouldn’t, He can get us back on the right road.  He can even use the “wrong road” to teach us.

            This also means that there is no such thing as a wrong road. What makes a road “right” is not that it’s the road we want to be on or that it will take us where we want to go as an express route. What makes a road right has nothing to do with where the road is, what it is like, or even where it goes. What makes the road right is God being there with us. 

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