A-Maze-ing

Dear Faith Family,

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ,(Colossians 2:8).

We told our son to stick with us.  Don’t wander off.  I guess you already have an idea where this is going!  Just wish we had known where our son was going on that day!  Where were we?  In a maze somewhere in Florida.  It consisted of thick and tall hedges, a good place for a young boy to wander off.  And wander off he did! 

Life is like a maze (in addition to being like a box of chocolates).  There is a confusing, often nonsensical, path from start to finish.  Problem is, we don’t know where the finish.  Problem is, we cannot see from start to finish.  Frankly, we can only see some of the path behind, a short snippet of the path ahead, and the hedges on either side.  Problem is, there are a lot of other paths between start and finish that compete for our attention. 

Isn’t it amazing how quickly and easily we are led down what appears to be a perfectly good path only to run into a dead end?  (Picture a maze on a page on your desk in front of you.  Pencil in hand, trace a pathway that dead-ends.)  Been down any dead-end paths lately?  You know, like the paths of self-gratification, or the paths of self-exaltation, or greed, or….  Still coming up empty wandering down the wrong paths? 

In the middle of the maze there was what I’ll call a “God tower”. It rose above the hedges.  We ascended the tower, and everything changed!  We could see the whole maze.  From the “God tower”, my wife and I began to instruct our son back to the right path.  Side note: even then our son wanted to choose his own path rather than listen to us.  Sometimes God lets us bump into a few dead ends to help us want to listen to Him! 

God doesn’t need to construct a tower in the maze of your life.  He is that strong tower, (Proverbs 18:10).  He already knows everything, (Psalm 15:3; Psalm 139).  He knows you.  He knows why He made you.  He knows where you’ve been, where you are, and where you are going.  He intentionally made you on purpose, His purpose, so that you might walk His path. 

Maybe we would be a little less distracted by the dead-ends if we spent more time on our knees looking up at the Tower who is our God! 

Learning to fix my eyes on Jesus,

Pastor Karl