I remember driving around London with a friend of mine, and we were severely lost. It was even more annoying because we could see the destination, but every time it seemed like we were getting close, the road would peel off into a different direction. At one point we ended up in an area we didn't want to be...
"Lock your door Ellison"
"Why?"
"People get car-jacked in this area all the time"
"No they do...."
suspicious man knocks on the window asking for directions....we drive off
What to do now??...
"I know, I'll call my dad" my friend suddenly says....
And so he calls his dad and asks for directions. To be honest, I didn't think this would do much good. We didn't even know where we were!! On the phone my friend said "We are near a really big tree and a shop called Woody's Grill". Great!! There are about 10000000 trees in London and Woody's Grill is so ghetto that a cockroach would probably get mugged in there.
However this seemed to be enough information for his father to lead us to our destination.
"Turn left here, turn right there, you should be near the petrol station now? yes? good! Take the next left........."
He stayed on the phone for the entire rest of the journey with directions that were even better than a GPS system. And we got to where we needed to be safe and sound.
There are things in life where clear cut answers are available to us. Directions to a nightclub (I think that was where we were going), recipe for double chocolate chip brownies, instructions on how to construct your Ikea bedside table.....But then many times in life the answers are not there.
Then what? My first reaction would be to pray. That's like my friend calling his old man, cause prayer is our 'direct line to God right'? True as this is, God does not always respond with directions of military standard precision. Or maybe he does and we are just not 'smart' enough to understand, see or hear them.
OR maybe there is no such thing as one answer, and that when we ask God for help, how to discover his will, there is no formula or map to get us there.
Life can be short and unexpected. I am reading about the tragic news about the cyclone in Burma. 22'000 lives have been lost so far. What are those people asking God right now?
The best that we can do, as cliched as this sounds, is to live life to its fullest. This is the way I think God wants us to live, to soak up every inch of life that's given to us. Because life is a gift.
James 1:17 says "Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights".
When it comes to discovering God's will. I think the best thing to do is simply LIVE life. and trust that God through that, is somehow guiding us.....
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