Yesterday I was on my way to Tom’s Donuts to pick up some diabetes-inducing treats for after church, and although I only had a couple miles to drive from my house, there was another old guy on the road at the same time. (At 7:30 in the morning on a Sunday it’s only old guys like me who are up and about.) But unlike me, this particular old guy, who had handicapped license plates, a walker thrown into the back seat and showing out the back window along with, apparently, every other earthly possession this guy had thrown into the car as well. It’s a two lane road down State Blvd, and he and I are the only two cars on the road. But he’s speeding up, slowing down, crossing lanes without signaling, left to right, then a hundred feet later, right to left. And now I’m annoyed and ready to honk my horn and perhaps give him an appropriate hand gesture, and then I realize that because of his careless and sloppy maneuvering, I am now in the wrong lane and I can’t make the left turn onto Wells Street and into the parking lot of the donut shop. Instead, I’m forced to go straight, make a right turn into another parking lot, and then essentially bolt across the street and into Tom’s Donuts’ lot, which also means I have to drive completely around the bakery in order to park in the angled parking spaces on the other side of the building. OMG. I was so annoyed! As I’m pulling in, the incompetent driver is coming out with his donuts, and I say to him, “Hey buddy, your lights are burned out because when you signalled those 32 lane changes you made, no lights were working.” He ignored me and got back into his car and drove away.
I thought about all the times I myself had been forced to circle past my desired exit in a roundabout because I couldn’t get over to the outer lane in time. Or the times when I’m in a large city like Chicago and literally no one is going to let me over to where I need to be, so I end up having to take a longer route, often having to backtrack or find alternative routes through the unknown wilderness to get to my destination.
In the book of Exodus, the big story is that of the Hebrew people wandering in their own wilderness. They left Egypt in a celebratory mood, but God (and Moses) decided not to take them along the shortest route, which would’ve resulted in armed conflict with those damned Philistines, but instead to take them in a circuitous, annoying, 40 year trek that finally resulted in their getting to their desitination in the Promised Land. Exodus 13:17 “When Pharoah let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the Philistines, even though that would’ve been the shorter route. God knew that if the people had had to fight and engage in war, they would run back to Egypt.”
I’m well aware of this story, of course, so you’d think I would find more patience when I’m on the road trying to get somewhere. But rather than focus on my innate impatience, I’m focusing instead on trying to simply trust the process of the journeying. Sometimes we’re in a big hurry to get somewhere and we know just how to do it quickly. But other times, we’re prevented from doing it out way because God has another way for us to follow—annoying and circuitous though that path might be. Remember, God didn’t abandon the Hebrews in the desert. He led them with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night to show them another way. And it was in the wandering around in circles for 40 damn years that they finally figured out, Duh, maybe they should just trust God.
Sometimes we all find ourselves going in circles or having to take detours, or making last minute changes to our best laid plans. Through it all, God is with us, sometimes in remarkable ways, but usually in the ministry of the mundane. Prayerful attention to God’s presence is the thing that lets us get off the ramp, make another way, and find our path to where God is trying to lead us.
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