But I've Never Gone That Way Before

A couple of weeks ago, I needed to scoot from the local meat market over to Trader Joe's for a few groceries.  It would require me to cut across town at a time when schools were letting out, moving slowly from stop sign to stop sign, and cross the railroad tracks twice, always a risk of getting caught by a freight train as slow as a reluctant teenager on a school morning.  I knew the route.  I had passed this way many times before.

I commenced my trek, ready to turn left at the intersection to hop over the tracks, looking carefully for cross traffic and hoping to make the other side before a train appeared and the railroad crossing arms blocked the road. 

I had been praying earlier that morning to follow God into His day for me, instead of trying to fit God into my own agenda.  Create in me a new heart, O LORD, give me new eyes to see "the same old things" differently.  Navigate me through sticky situations and know that there are no interruptions in Your economy.

And in the glum of a mundane errand, at that ordinary intersection of roads, plodding along on the same path through town and through my day, I saw something different.

God placed an extraordinary thought in my mind, "Turn right, instead."

I have passed this way hundreds of times before.  It never occurred to me to turn right.  But quite suddenly, duh, I realized that turning right placed me on the most direct route to my destination.  It had been here all along.  I had driven past it countless times, my mind fixed resolutely on "the way I always go," lost in my grumblings about traffic and trains.  What I wanted to do totally blocked my vision of how to get there.  My deeds blinded me to direction and ultimate destination.

I turned the car right.  And then I chuckled.  For this new vision had placed me, believe it or not, on High Road.  And that is what God always intends, in all that we do or say or handle, to take the high road.  Always, His higher way is the best route to take, a path of divine purpose, and with a deeper destination in mind.  And often, it is a way not so obvious on my daily radar.

I can get there on my own, or I can follow God's leading into it.  His way is always prepared.  We have only to keep our hearts open and walk in it.

And I will lead the blind
     in a way they know not,
in paths that they have not known
     I will guide them.
I will turn the darkness before them into light,
     the rough places into level ground.

                           Isaiah 42.16