Yellow Stones

I read an article in the Livingston (Montana) Enterprise about folks heading to Yellowstone this summer using Apple maps and ending up in a residential area along the Wyoming-Idaho border close to Driggs.  Some of the subdivision residents painted rocks yellow and put them at the entrance of their subdivision, along with a sign, telling the lost travelers they’d been misled by the app.  Needless to say, some folks weren’t happy.  You know how it is.  You’re on vacation.  You have a set destination and you have a set amount of time to do it all in.  And now you’re way off track and have wasted that precious time being misdirected.

Before phone apps Coop and I used a Map n Go program off the computer.  We were headed to Arizona to visit my folks at their new retirement place for Thanksgiving for the first time.  Coop is a planner so he used Map n Go, printed the directions out, and away we went.  We ended up at an almost deserted forest service camp with our gas gauge on the red, after hours.  God was gracious.  The two guys that were working late gave us a little over two gallons of gas and we were able to make it to the folks place.  What an adventure!  We don’t use Map n Go anymore for directions.  We use multiple applications.  When we went to our grandson’s Coast Guard graduation in New Jersey our son-in-law asked us if we’d used the GPS, our phone app or our atlas.  We said, “Yes”.  We used all of them.

This makes me think of traveling through life.  There are a lot of roads and a lot of obstacles and a lot of ways to get lost.  What “mapping system” are we using?  It almost freaks me out how many option for directions there could be.  There’s TV, internet, books, friends and family that influence us every day.  But the best direction comes from God.   The Bible is an excellent roadmap for life.  God loves us.  He doesn’t get confused with His directions.  The world’s mapping system is confusing and destructive.  It changes all the time.  You think you’re on the right road and then it takes a u-turn.  Not good.  God’s mapping system is as perfect now as when it was first written.  God is always with us.  We don’t need an internet connection or our phone.  Prayer is always on.  Proverbs is a good place to start if you want to know about being smart or being a fool.  John is a good book to read to see how much God loves you.  We’ll never find our way through life on our own unless we trust in God who has it all mapped out for our good and His glory.