Brett and I drove to Washington DC to pick up Colby for Christmas break today.  We decided to leave several hours early and take Aspen to the American Girl Doll store first.  I have GPS capabilities on my phone, but I printed out the directions as a back up plan.  Brett drove while I navigated and we arrived at the American Girl Doll store without a mishap. 

According to Google maps our destination to pick up Colby was 15 miles and 30 minutes away from the American Girl Doll store.  We left the mall 45 minutes before he was to arrive and I spoke the address into the phone.  We were headed for Union Station because at the last-minute Colby decided to take the bus home rather than drive.  Brett still drove and I still navigated.  Things did not go quite so smoothly this time.  I missed a few turns, but Brett quickly made u-turns to compensate for my mistakes.  We arrived at Union Station, but since there was no sign and we had never been there before and the GPS told us we still needed to go to what turned out to be behind the Union Station building, we drove around and around finally arriving at the destination.  By this time it was 30 minutes past Colby’s arrival time and he still wasn’t there. 

To complicate matters even further my phone with its GPS capabilities died.  Of course I had failed to bring my car charger with me.  Finally Colby arrived and ended up on the front side of the building rather than the back side.  Thanks to Brett’s skillful navigation and driving skills we made it back to the front of the building, which by the way was far more complicated than it should have been.  I didn’t offer my opinion about which way we should go as I know my internal navigation system is faulty. 

Colby jumped into the car and we once again made another u-turn to try to exit downtown Washington DC without a GPS or printed instructions.  I’m not sure where the printed instructions went, but they disappeared in my time of greatest need.  Fortunately Colby came to our rescue and connected my phone to his laptop to charge it.  The GPS seemed to take great delight in guiding us through an area of town with a stoplight at every intersection, but we finally made it to the freeway and much later than originally anticipated we pulled into our driveway.

Without the GPS or printed directions we didn’t know which way to go.  If we had chosen to follow any directions I might have given, I’m sure we would still be driving in circles in downtown Washington DC.  My internal navigation system tells me to turn the wrong way every time.  Our natural human nature automatically turns us away from God every time if we follow our own inclinations.  It is only when we give up following our man-made directions and follow the directions that God has given that we will ever head in the right direction.  God has the big map and can see the next best turn in our lives.