Direction

Direction

The LORD directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives. Though they stumble, they will never fall, for the LORD holds them by the hand.

I SURVEYED the dining room table with trepidation. Tiny cars with pegs in them littered the surface of the game board while messy stacks of pretend money and career cards lined the edges. The cover had been tossed haphazardly to the edge of the table, the directions abandoned next to it.

The Game of Life had been lying on my kitchen table for three days. When we first began, it seemed straightforward: collect a job, money, and a family before retiring. But I had forgotten how much the twists and turns of the game quickly became just as complex and confusing as the real life the game mimics. We ran out of time to finish the game that evening, so the kids had made us promise to leave it out. Days later, it was still sprawled across the table, making eating meals a challenge. In my mind, it was less than ideal.

My husband shrugged when I complained over morning coffee.

“That’s pretty true to life, honestly,” he said. “It takes more than a few days to build a life.”

That was too philosophical to dissect at 6:30 a.m. But later I kept returning to the idea: What happens when our own life seems to mimic that board game? Sometimes life can seem messy and directionless, and what seems straightforward on the surface is actually much more complicated.

The truth is that one of the hardest parts of the Christian walk is being patient when things don’t happen as quickly as we’d like or in the way we expect. Which direction should we go? What should we do next? It’s easy to become discouraged or impatient because we can’t envision the larger story God is writing. Yet even though we can’t see how the disparate threads are being woven together, God can—in fact, he delights in the details.

As Christians, let’s encourage one another to continue to seek God’s direction. Though things may not happen as quickly as we hope or in quite the way we expect, he has not forgotten us. In our momentary frustration, may we never lose sight of that living hope.

Lord, thank you that we can look to you for direction. Amen.

-Kristin

One Good Step: Spend time praying about an area of life in which you need direction.