Where are we headed?
Today, with Global Positioning System (GPS) units and Mapquest, travelers shouldn’t get lost. Getting to the destination, though, requires submission to the one who plotted the course, otherwise what’s the point of having them? Even if bystanders “know” the way to a destination, those committed to GPS units won’t put the car in gear until their unit tells them how to leave the driveway.
Life for us as individuals, as groups, as companies, and as a nation should find us asking, “Where are we headed?” and “Who wrote the travel plans?”
Travel routes have their consequences.
Paul and I are still in the pre-GPS era. We get out an atlas and plot how to go to our destination, but we know, regardless of the route, “home” is our final destination.
As companies adjust in this economy, they must ask destination questions. We bystanders observe wrong turns and hard decisions, knowing the ultimate responsibility lies with the one who voluntarily accepted the role.
As a nation, we do well to ask where we’re headed if we stick to these current travel plans. With a national debt of nearly $12 trillion, if $1 million were spent each day since the birth of Jesus Christ, we’d still be far short of reaching our first trillion. How much debt do we want to leave for future generations?
But financial indebtedness isn’t the only way to gauge our travel plans. Where will our nation be in 10 years if the medical profession is told individuals can’t obey their consciences without penalties? Do we really want the nation’s largest and federally funded abortion provider serving as counselors to teens, using a room in our high schools? According to the American Center for Law and Justice, every attempt to leave in the conscience clause and protect the unborn life has been killed in the current health care bill.
And what about a sound commitment to Israel’s right to exist? I’m glad I’m not the one writing our country’s travel plans, but I think I’ve read the fine print of what happens if we opt to leave Israel to face opposition alone.
A lot of decisions belong to those with far more power than most of us have. Still, we make a lot of decisions about our own travel through life.
Where will our current course take us? How close do the dreams we once had line up with where will we be in 10 years if we continue as we are? Who’s writing our travel plans? Is it time for a course correction?
In Ruth Bell Graham’s “Prodigals and Those Who Love Them,” she quotes St. Augustine’s “Confessions,” “The only way a man can lose You (God) is to leave You; and if he leaves You, where does he go? He can run only from Your pleasure to Your wrath.”
Where are we headed today?
Marge Warder is a general assignment reporter. E-mail her at news@redoakexpress.com.