Asking for Directions

I haven't written a blog post in a while. I tried a few times; I would begin typing, but each time ended with me saying to myself: "I've got nothing."

Anyone who has known me for any length of time knows one extremely frustrating fact about me: I have a terrible sense of direction. This means that sometimes my friends and family get embarrassed and slightly panicked phone calls from me asking for directions. This might be funny until it's not: I somehow always wait until I am at my wits' end, when I have finally made so many wrong turns that I can't even admit to myself how lost I am.

And so it was that I set out to write a blog about where I find God in daily life, and like many times when I have set out to find many things -- I got a little lost.

Where was God in the frustrating situations I was finding myself in? I'm not talking about the big things we deal with in life -- I'm talking about the little, petty, annoying things. The tiny argument which we lost but we know we were so right. The small grudges we hold. The cold weather that doesn't let up. The person on the bus who talks loudly when we just want to rest.

Where is God when we keep messing up? When we know that we are just plain selfish?

If God was present in those situations, I couldn't see it. If there was something I could write about them, I kept coming up short.

But I've got a funny idea now, that maybe that's exactly when God shows up. When we realize that we come up short. When we realize that we do not have it all together. God shows up when we ask him for help. When we realize that we are people who need to ask for directions from God and from each other.

Maybe that's when we can start finding God, because we finally have the humility to start looking not just for a nice theory or a good explanation but a for a real Encounter that surprises us and frees us from our self-centeredness that leaves us lost.

And maybe at that point -- we finally can admit that we just need to buy a GPS.