I’ve had a GPS for the happier years of my driving life. When I first started driving, couldn’t read maps and hadn’t heard of the “map reader”, my friend the GPS. So I had to rely on other people for directions everywhere. The problem was, sometimes I couldn’t understand their directions, sometimes they were too lengthy, and sometimes people didn’t know the way. Worse even than this was getting lost and having no idea where I was or how I could get back to territory I recognized.
I remember one day being lost on my way to an important meeting for college. I was trying to get to a college I had gone to for two years, and I could not find my way. I felt beyond stupid, beyond stressed, and, frankly, beyond hope that I would ever find my way.
I didn’t have my cell phone on me, and I couldn’t think of what to do. At last I decided I would try to get directions. At a stoplight, I rolled down my window to yell over to a man in a painting business truck if he knew how to get to the college.
I remember him putting his car in park, hopping out, and coming over to explain. He must have seen the distress on my face, because he pointed me in the right direction and continued talking through the green light until he was sure I understood. He didn’t berate me for not carrying a map with me. He didn’t judge me for not knowing my way around town. He simply told me how to get to the right place.
I was able to get to that college because of his accurate directions, which came from his knowledge of the map of our town, and because of his deep compassion, which came from his empathy for my lostness.
Many, many times, Christians—and those who call themselves Christians but are not, though here I want to focus on actual Christians—have not behaved like the man in the paint truck, myself included. Instead, we have had an attitude of, “Don’t you know what it’s the Bible?” or even self-righteous scorn that the lost person doesn’t know how to get to the right path. Or we have a flippancy of, “Read your Bible.” instead of a willingness to explain the Bible to those who may never have read it or don’t yet understand it. Or, we ourselves have drifted so far away from God’s Word that we don’t even know where we are, much less are we able to give directions to others.
As a Christian, I have to ask myself two things when I encounter anyone who might be lost:
Do I have accurate directions? Have I been reading the Bible, reflecting on what I’ve learned, and talking to God about it? Have I been practicing what I have learned? Have I been praying for wisdom?
Do I have deep compassion? Am I willing to devote my life to helping the lost? Can I hurt for even the people who are most undesirable to me, the people who believe exactly opposite to me, who behave in ways that openly offend me, who seem to make worse and worse mistakes all the time? Am I willing to be inconvenienced at my busiest times, at my inopportune times, to share directions with someone who doesn’t have any or has been given faulty ones?
. . . Wouldn’t it be sad, wouldn’t it be incredibly sad, if I died with my map clenched in my fist, excited to reach Heaven, while all around me people who have crossed my path at one time or another died and discovered themselves at Hell’s gates while I never once shared my directions for eternal life?
Then Jesus came to them and said, “All power in heaven and on earth is given to me. So go and make followers of all people in the world. Baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach them to obey everything that I have taught you, and I will be with you always, even until the end of this age.” (Matthew 28:18-20, NCV)
Clip art © Microsoft Office
The huge expanse God effortlessly made? That is Heaven or, as other versions say “sky” (NLT, NIV, WEB) or “Heavens” (YLT, DBT).
It’s hard to imagine an existence without time and space because we were created in time and space, maybe something like how it would be hard for an unhatched duckling to visualize a pond!
gracestories 