A Road Not Taken

Several years ago as I was taking one of our daughters back to her apartment down in the urban core, I missed the ramp into the city and ended up on another highway out of the city.  It was not the way I intended to go, certainly not a road that was anywhere on my radar, and I was a bit dismayed at how much longer our journey would take.

I looked for the first opportunity to turn around.  To my surprise, the first exit we came to was a road surpringly close to our house.  "This would be a much more direct route to take," I said out loud. "I never knew it was here."  We turned around and headed back into the city.

I dropped off our daughter at her apartment and returned home by taking that newly discovered way, cutting several minutes off my return journey.

Am I so set in my ways?  Is my mind so closed that I do not even consider how God may be trying to re-route me?  Not a detour at all, but a better route all along?

The road not taken might simply be "trust God in this."

It may not be my plans working out,
           but His deeper purposes.

And I remind myself
that the unexpected is never random at all.
         God knew this.

And a highway shall be there,
and it shall be called the Holy Way...

                       Isaiah 35.8

I have only to be faithful
       in following Him into it,
even that which I do not understand,
a place
        -- or route-- of His own choosing,
                                      not mine.,
a way of His protecting,
a way of His providing,
a way of realizing
                   who God is.

Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth,
         do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
           and rivers in the desert.

                          Isaiah 43.19