Do you know where you are on the journey? Do you need to replot your course?
You've asked it. If you have kids, they've asked it. Are we there yet? It just happened recently with me – but we had literally just left and my oldest said, "are we there yet? How long until we're there?"
Sometimes it feels like we'll never get there. It often feels worst about halfway through the trip. I think it's when you're about 40% there that it's worst. Because it feels like you've been on the road forever, but you still have more than half left. It's the worst mental part of the journey.
A few years ago my family was driving from Billings to Denver. My sister lived there for around 10 years and I have aunts, uncles, and cousins down there, so it's a drive that I'm quite familiar with. On this particular trip, we had rented a minivan so that my wife's sister and her kids could all ride with us, so I was driving a car filled with 4 kids and 3 adults. We'd been on the road for several hours and I was thinking we should be getting pretty close to the halfway point. I was looking at the odometer and checking the fuel, and the measurement said we were right about halfway based on mileage. The problem? I hadn't seen any signs recently for Casper, WY which is the classic midway point.
We still had fuel, so I wasn't crazy worried, but I started paying closer and closer attention, and then after about 20 miles, I was getting just a bit confused. What was I missing?
For those of you who have never taken this trip, there's a point in the trip where you swap interstates. It's the I-25 junction. Right around Buffalo, WY is where the junction is, and if you miss it, instead of heading to Denver, you stay on I-90 and head toward Spearfish, SD.
You guessed it. By the time I noticed where we were, do you want to know what I remember the first sign being? Welcome to South Dakota. I had missed it. I completely blew it. I don't even remember seeing the junction. I felt so dumb, so foolish, and I was so mad at myself and felt like I let the whole vehicle down.
Do you know where you are in your journey with Jesus? Are you still on course? Are you going in the direction you intended?
I think in our journey with Jesus we can fall into a similar trap where we're just going through the motions and haven't recently stopped to make sure that we're actually headed in the direction we want to be. We're just going along with everything assuming that we're still headed in the right way. But what if you've drifted?
Maybe it's time to take inventory and check to see where you are. Maybe it's time to evaluate where your headed and make sure that you're going where you want to. Maybe it's time to replot your course so that you can adjust and make corrections to avoid a costly detour.
In the end, we wound up in Spearfish and had lunch and everyone in the car was forgiving and didn't give me too much grief. In life, our decisions often affect more than ourselves. If you're off-course, you may be affecting your spouse, your kids, your extended family, your friends. Are they on a journey with you that you'll have to apologize for?
Here are some questions to help you think through this:
Let's be people who regularly check-in and make sure we're headed in the direction that we intend. Don't fall into the trap of going through the motions, let's be intentional and set the model for getting to where we're going and bring others along with us.