Lost at the Wheel

I spent twelve hours on Thursday in an airplane hangar as part of a team assisting with medical evacuations ahead of Hurricane Ike. I spent another three hours of the same day lost either trying to find the hangar or trying to find my way back home. It’s easy enough to explain away the confusing trip to the airport since I had never been there before and it was in the wee hours of the morning. I had to stop at a Marriott for directions and another hangar before I found the place. When it looked like the chances of receiving more evacuees was growing slimmer that afternoon they told me to share my contact information and leave - and I tried. An hour later I was back almost to the place where I started! The thought of driving down LBJ at rush hour was not at all appealing, nor did I know how fast I could come back to the airport via LBJ at that time of day if they needed me, so I stopped and ate. I was close enough to the command center that I went back to make sure they didn’t need me and left for the second time to go home. And AGAIN I got lost and spent close to another hour trying to get on the right highways going in the right direction. I can easily make my way in and out of DFW airport, but the freeways around the airport run at odd angles and new highways have been built that I’m not even sure where they lead. This is not my first run-in with this maze and I practically need to double my time if I have to travel to that area to allow for back-tracking and re-routing. My husband said he may not wait for Christmas to buy me a GPS.

My prayer for the congregation?

Dear God, You provide a true bearing in a confusing world. We travel with assurance of direction and cause, but at times find ourselves brought to the realization that we may not be on the correct path after all. We think we have read the signs correctly, studied our course, and aligned our bearings to arrive at our destination, but despite our careful planning find we are not at all where we thought we would be. Sometimes alternative routes prove to have better results than the one we proposed, but other times we find ourselves making the same mistakes over and over. You bring us back to a starting point and with a firm push entrust us to find our legs and balance. O God, you are our northern star, a centering point to which we can return again and again, and a position we can reference when we are on expeditions and missions. Let us be where you want us to be. Amen