Proverbs 26:12

Proverbs 26:12

Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.

Several years back, I took a work trip to Detroit that required a short drive north of the city into the suburbs for my final destination. I scheduled a flight that would land early enough that my drive into the suburbs would still be in the daylight hours. After several mechanical delays with the aircraft, we departed 3 hours late and landed well into the evening hours in Detroit. This was before the times of smartphone GPS mapping, so I had the old MapQuest prints out of the exact route I needed to take, exits and all, to allow a smooth transition to my final destination. Five minutes into my drive, the orange DETOUR signs started appearing…one flashing construction sign read ”Highway Closed due to overnight construction. See Detour.” And in a matter of seconds, I was detoured off my intended path and heading into a completely unknown direction. So there I was, late night Detroit, a useless set of print outs in hand, no real idea if I was heading in the right direction or not. After attempting to figure out the correct direction on my own, I found myself sitting alone at a traffic light, in a rental car that felt about as fortified as an egg shell, in what could accurately be described as the middle of the ghetto. A brief moment of panic set in. What now!?! Thankfully the Lord led me to abandoning my solo endeavor and instilling the help of my wife, who was able to locate a map online and get me back on track. I am confident that had I continued to push forward on my own, trying to regain my intended path without help, trouble would have certainly found me. At times, life can seem a lot like this little adventure I had in Detroit. We have our plans all laid out according to what we think should and will happen. Then life throws a “road closed” sign at us and suddenly those “solid” plans we had are of no use. We try to figure things out based on our own wisdom. We try to untie the knots we’ve made based on our own intellect and determination. We try to navigate a new path based on what the world feeds us as “right and wrong”. And often times, when we take this solo approach, we find that things are more broken than when we started. When we try to live apart from God…when we try to develop some sense of how we are to live based on what the world feeds us, we eventually find ourselves lost, desperate, and afraid. It may take a while for this failure to creep into the scene….but make no mistake, it’s coming. Thankfully, we don’t have to live that way…thankfully we are not intended to live in the dark, guessing our way for the right direction. Thankfully we have all the wisdom we need in God’s Word…printed in plain English, for our daily consumption. And through prayer, we have a direct line to an infinitely capable and incredibly wise Father. May we seek that wisdom and direction daily, may we soak it up and allow it to touch every part of our lives, and may we put nothing in the way of it! To God be the glory!