After my freshman year in college, I
went to work at a church summer camp that I had fallen in love during my high
school years. This camp is very dear to
my heart as I have several amazing memories of meeting new friends and having
God work in my life there. When the
opportunity presented itself to work on staff at the camp I willingly jumped on
board. Being my first summer after a
year of college I was still trying to get used to the whole “being an adult”
thing which meant being away from my family most weekends. One weekend in particular I was scheduled to
work the entire weekend, which happened to coincide with our family
reunion. I remember having to tell my
parents that I couldn’t be there, who were saddened that their “little boy”
wouldn’t be joining them. However, at
the last minute on Friday afternoon our director informed me that we had done
such a great job that week, that we could have the entire weekend off. I became very excited as I thought about what
an amazing surprise it would be for me to surprise my parents and the rest of
my family at the reunion. I quickly
packed a bag, hopped in the car and drove to one of the few gas stations in
town. I bought an atlas and off I went,
however shortly into the drive I realized that I didn’t know exactly where the
reunion was, let alone how to get there.
I pulled off on an exit and thought up a plan of contacting another
family member who informed me of the location of the hotel and the reunion
which led me right back on the road. A
couple of hours later I found myself pulling into the hotel parking lot excited
to see my family. This experience taught
me a couple things about driving, directions, and attempting to pull off
surprises for other people. First, I
realized that even though my intentions were good about surprising my family,
without the proper directions I couldn’t get there. Second, at the first warning sign (not
knowing where I was going); I needed to stop, get some advice, and turn
around. Thankfully since then directions
have come pretty easily to me either through our GPS or my phone, but usually
after one trip somewhere I can find my way back several times without any
assistance.
After thinking back to this story I
recalled the number of times our lives are similar to this. How many times to we get in the car, press
the accelerator without any idea of where we are going? How many times to we ignore the warning or
caution signs on the side of the road to get to where we think our destination
is? How do we know if we are even on the
right road? These are all questions that
parallel driving and our journey of faith.
We must be willing to acknowledge the road signs of life; before we
drift so far off the road we cause damage to ourselves or others.
As we move through the next few
weeks at Refuge, our youth ministry at Faith UMC we will be discussing a series
called Road Signs. Here is a snapshot of this series: “If you set your course in the wrong
direction, you’ll end up in the wrong place every time. No matter where you hope to end up, the road
you choose matters. The book of Proverbs
gives us wisdom to help navigate the choices of life, because we know that each
choice determines the direction of our lives.
And it’s our direction, not our intention that ultimately determines our
destination. Where are you heading? What path are you on?”
Over the next few weeks we will be
journeying through this series looking at the road signs of life and providing
our families with questions for discussion that connect to the lessons we are
presenting their students. Our hope is
that you will join us on this journey as we seek to navigate the road of our
lives laid out before us while seeking to be attentive to God’s directions.
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