Wrong Road; Wrong Destination

 

My oldest daughter and oldest son went to college in southern Wisconsin.  My youngest daughter and youngest son went to college in northern Wisconsin.  Needless to say, I made many trips back and forth to Wisconsin - fall and spring and, worst of all, winter at the Christmas break.  One Christmas, my oldest daughter brought two friends home with her for the winter break.  One of them had a car, so I was spared the long drive up and back.  They left school after the last class, so it was late in the day.  It was already dark and it was snowing.  They took turns driving so Rebekah took the wheel in northern Illinois.  Josh told her to just stay on the same interstate and she would be fine.  Then he went to sleep.  Bad idea.  Rebekah was doing fine, but near Rockford, the interstate curved around to bypass the city.  On the south side of Rockford, I-39 took an abrupt turn south and US 20 continued straight ahead.  So in the driving snow, Rebekah kept driving straight ahead.  In an hour, she noticed a sign that said, “Welcome to Iowa”.  She knew that Iowa was not on the way to Tennessee, so she woke up the others.  She had driven an hour out of their way!  They had to back-track another hour to get back onto the right road.  Rebekah thought she was going south, but she had been going west.  Hey, have you ever been on the wrong road - spiritually?  Or worse yet, are you still on the wrong road?  You may be involved in things that you know are leading you in the wrong direction.  May I give you a warning: the wrong road will take you to the wrong destination.  And if you don’t want to go where you are headed, you need to turn around right now!  Solomon gave us a stern warning in Proverbs 16:25, “There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”  Hey, this is your warning, not from me, but from Solomon and the dear Lord: change the road that you are on, or you will end up where you don’t want to be. Think about it … and turn around now.

Follow the Signs!

 

This past Sunday afternoon, on my way to church I was frustrated with traffic.  Not that I haven’t been frustrated for the past year with the I-24/I-75 rebuild.  But this afternoon, unobservant drivers just got onto my last nerve.  For a week, we have had full-sized flatbed trucks with flashing yellow lighted signs warning, “New Traffic Pattern” and “WB I-24 Right Lane”.  So today when the change occurred, there was not one but three of those trucks spaced a mile apart with their warning messages.  You’d think drivers could understand the signs and get the message.  And then there was a big new green interstate sign clearly showing the fork in the road with the “New” traffic pattern clearly labeled.  But countless drivers didn’t get it.  The intersection was backed up for five miles!  I saw a semi stopped in the fork in the road trying to figure out which way to go.  But he was too late.  He had driven past the four signs telling him which way to go and now he was stuck looking at the two roads with a decision to make.  Why can’t these drivers just follow the signs?!  Why don’t they just trust what the signs say, and just do what they say?!  Hey, isn’t that how we are with God?  God tells us in His word the Bible what we have to do to live a happy, peaceful, productive life.  But we just don’t follow God’s directions.  We want to live our lives our way.  We won’t follow God’s warning signs.  And when trouble comes, we can’t figure out which way to go because we have abandoned God.  Job said in his book, Job 5:7, “Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.”  Do sparks from a bonfire fly upwards?  Of course!  Are we born for trouble?  Of course!  Job went on to say in Job 28:28, “… Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.”  Well said, Job, well said!  Hey, we need to put that quote in flashing yellow lights on a full-sized flatbed truck.

Hand-Dug Well

My dad was a do-it-yourself kind of a fellow.  I suppose I picked that up from him.  I like to be independent.  My dad dug our well in Maryland … by hand.  He had help from his two brothers and several church friends.  I remember watching them go down into the darkness.  Dad and a neighbor friend worked for a while cleaning out hand-dug wells for people in our little community.  My dad would carry the windlass in the back of Mr. Cecil’s pickup truck and go down into wells to shore up weak areas and clean out the sediment that had gradually filled into the bottom of the well.  My mother didn’t like the work.  She knew that it was dangerous.  I think that my dad thrived on the danger.  One client had a well that had a bad odor and nasty tasting water.  After going down the well, dad came back up with a drowned animal carcass in the bucket.  He added a cup of bleach to the well water to kill bacteria.  Problem solved.  Hey, do you have problems lurking deep in your life?  Is something not quite right deep inside your soul?  Do you have a rottenness lurking deep down where no one can see?  Jeremiah was all too familiar with Israel’s backsliding.  He reminded them (and us, by proxy) in Jeremiah 26:13, “Therefore now amend your ways and your doings, and obey the voice of the LORD your God; and the LORD will repent him of the evil that he hath pronounced against you.”  The solution is simple: repent of your evil ways and deeds, and turn back to God in obedience.  God will hear and God will forgive.  Hey, don’t put up with that rottenness one more minute.  Get right with the Lord.  You’ll be glad that you did.