Do You Have a Travel Plan?

You are planning a cross country trip to California from your home in Pennsylvania. You and your family pack your bags, take the dog to the kennel, put a temporary stop on your mail and newspaper, and do all the things necessary to prepare for a three-week trip.

At the crack of dawn, everyone piles into your SUV and off you go. The plan is to travel the historic Lincoln Highway, which opened in 1913 as the first coast-to-coast road in the United States. This highway originates in Times Square and ends 3,389 miles later in San Francisco’s Lincoln Park. For the first seven hundred miles of your trip there is a sense of awe and excitement traveling on such a historic highway.

But, by the time you get near Chicago, the trip begins to become monotonous, so you decide to change it up and find more scenic routes, to make the remainder of the trip, in your words,  “more fun.” To add to the fun, you announce that instead of using the GPS and maps, for the remainder of the trip you will use an old fashioned compass and follow the “Go west, young man” advice popularized during America’s westward expansion in the 1800s. It is at his point that your family gives you “that look,” you know, the one when everyone but you thinks what is next is a bad idea.

Sounds foolish right? With all the navigational devices available, who in their right mind would drive across the country simply by “going west.” A compass is a valuable tool for navigation and orientation, but it probably is not the best tool for driving cross-country. Sure, eventually you will get to San Francisco by continually going west, but probably not in the most expedient and efficient way. You will likely encounter many unnecessary twists and turns.

Let’s be honest, we sometimes navigate our way through life that way as well – either by using the wrong navigational device or no device at all. At times we simply walk through life by “going west.” And by doing so, we make bad choices, we often never get where we want to go, and we encounter lots of roadblocks, wrong turns, and detours along the way.

Simply put, we often navigate through life foolishly, being guided by our own plans rather than by the will of God. Psalm 32:8 tells us that God desires to be our navigational device – “The LORD says, ‘I will guide you along the best pathway for life. I will advise you and watch over you’” (NLT).

The apostle Paul offers us this advice: “Be very careful, then, how you live – not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore, do not be foolish, understand what the Lord’s will is” (Ephesians 5:15-17).

[When a verse begins with the word “then,” it is imperative to go back and read the entire passage in its context, so I encourage you to read the entire section, beginning in 4:17 and ending at 5:20.]

What Paul is saying is that a foolish person has no real strategy, no real travel plan, for life and that the foolish person misses opportunities to live under God’s direction in an evil world.

So, today I ask, are you simply following the “go west” plan or will you seek God’s plan for the remaining journey?