Maps

When my husband and I are driving in unfamiliar territory, I am his co-pilot.  He relies on me to tell him where to go, and if I forget that he doesn't know where he's going one of two things happens: he'll either keep driving like he knows what's up until I realize we're way off track, or he'll just stop at an intersection and not go until I catch on to his waiting and tell him which way we ought to be turning.  Earlier in our marriage there were some awkwardly long intersection waits before I realized he needed my directions, but I've gotten quicker on the uptake :0)

I usually need directions to a new place once (and to travel there), and I'll be able to go back again without a refresher, even quite a time later.  And so it's hard for me to fathom how my hubby can NOT have remembered how to get to a place after what seems like LOTS of repeat visits.  (Also, I like to change up the scenery, so I will go to a place like my parents' house by lots of different routes...so some of hubby's confusion falls on my head...(maniacal laugh).)  

Anyway, he's a little hopeless with getting places.  Until he's studied a map.  If he can look at a map, he can get us there, and knows generally what neck of the woods we're in even when he hasn't been on a particular route.  

Don't we all wish for the map to some degree?  To know what's coming, to see the big picture, the Plan?  Of course we do.  Some of us handle go-with-the-flow muuuuch better than others, but there are times when every one of us just wants to Know.  

And while macadam roads aren't really that big a deal, the roadmap of life--what we're supposed to do, where we're supposed to go, what opportunities we're supposed to accept and decline, what the heck that heartbreak or hiccup was all about--those things are the stuff of heart-peace.  Or the lack of it.  

And for those questions, there's only one good answer:

"Thomas said to him, 'Lord, we do not know WHERE you are going.  How can we know the way?'  Jesus said to him, 'I AM THE WAY, the truth, and the life."  

And a few minutes later (and this is right before he was betrayed by Judas and taken to be brutally murdered...which he knew about from his Father Map), he told his friends, "PEACE I leave with you; my peace I give to you.  Not as the world gives do I give to you.  LET NOT YOUR HEARTS BE TROUBLED, neither let them be afraid."  

Follow Him.  He knows where He's leading you.