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Written by Mark Madavan
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By the time we had realised what had happened it was too late. I still
cannot quite believe that it happened. There was no real excuse, it was a
journey we had taken many times before – in fact we were going towards a
place we had lived for six years! But it happened.
More annoying still, it occurred at a junction where it was impossible to quickly correct our mistake. There was no place to do a quick U-turn, no little shortcut to get us quickly back on course, no possibility to work out an alternative way to get to the same place – no options. We were forced to travel over 15 miles to the next motorway junction in order to come back and go the right way. (Actually there was a junction before our U-turn junction but the people who design motorways - I am guessing that is someone’s job - decided to punish anyone who errored as we did by making the next junction an ‘on only’ junction – bless them God.)
So a single junction miss resulted in a 30 mile U-turn. And it got worse, after eventually correcting our path and engaging the correct route once more, we proceeded to miss the next major junction as well! What joy filled the car that day!
The reason our straightforward journey turned into a rather stressful elongated event was for one simple reason – we were not looking where we were going. We were not being reckless; Cathy paid enough attention to the road to ensure we kept within the law and didn’t crash, but our conversation about things I can no longer remember distracted us from where we needed to go.
Along our journey of faith, as individuals, families and as a wider church the Bible is clear how we are to live – love God and love people, allowing God’s Word to fill our hearts and minds. Psalms 119:105 “Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.” The Bible is also clear that God has a plan to impact and save our world, and we are called to be active participants in that plan. In Ephesians 2:10 we discover that God has prepared specific works for us to do – acts of kindness, words of encouragement, direction, correction, signposting people to Jesus.
The thing is, we can sometimes miss them. Not on purpose or because we are specifically doing something bad, wrong or harmful – we may well be doing everything right, but we miss them because we are caught up in other things. As a result we can find God sending us on a 30 mile U-turn to get back to that place where he wants us to be Jesus’ hands and feet and voice.
This summer (and beyond) can I encourage you to continue along the journey of faith; discovering more about Jesus and allowing the Holy Spirit to transform us more into the likeness of Jesus. But also to keep on the lookout for any junctions God wants you to take – to show an act of kindness to a stranger, to encourage someone, to share Jesus with someone, to give a reason for your faith. To share faith, hope and love.
Major U-turns are never fun!
Mark Madavan
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